A well-ordered and intuitive means to octave fuzz disorder, in many shapes and colors.
Great basic, focused fuzz tone. Intuitive if you’re open-minded. Lots of surprises. Nice design. High-quality construction.
None
$225
Death By Audio Octave Clang
deathbyaudio.com
Every instrument is a tool for expressing feeling. But when you have to convey a certain range of emotions spanning anguish, the rush of sonic anarchy, and the exhilaration of total liberation, octave fuzzes are tops. Generally speaking, octave fuzz isn’t an effect you use casually.
And it often leads to hairy places where you are forced to surrender control. But if you have something to say with an electric guitar and you want to punctuate it with an exclamation point, adding octave fuzz can do the trick. Need further convincing? Kick back, close your eyes, listen to Jimi’s “Machine Gun,” and get back to me.
It’s little surprise that Death By Audio, with its well-documented love of extreme and perverse sounds, would dabble in octave distortion. What’s a wonder is that DBA ever discontinued its own excellent take on the effect, the Octave Clang. There’s no need to mourn any longer, though. The Octave Clang is back. And it’s as thrillingly chaotic and—yes—as practical as ever.
Space Station Salvage
I try to avoid saying much about how pedals look. Unless you’re collecting them to display on your mantle, it’s sound that counts. Admittedly, DBA has my number when it comes to their graphics and control layouts—appearing, as they do, like a cross of ’70s-synth and conceptual automotive and aerospace design from the same period. That may not mean much to you, but I feel extra compelled to unleash when I see the Clang staring back at me from the floor. It looks awesome.
“It has mass and spiky character, and does a great job of suggesting the brutish, switchblade attitude of ’60s fuzz circuits while staying in its lane in a mix.”
The control set is simple. One footswitch bypasses the pedal or brings in the gain section without the octave-up effect. The second footswitch adds the octave. You cannot operate the octave effect alone. The two leftmost knobs are for output level and gain (which DBA claims can be as much as an extra 39 dB). The third is the shape control, which controls a pre-gain tilt EQ that enables a lot of control in a relatively forgiving way—no small consideration when you’re messing with an effect that can sound so hot and hectic.
Fizz, Spittle, and Valkyrie’s Screams
The fuzz side of the circuit is idiosyncratic and thrilling, if you like variations on snarling first- and second-generation ’60s fuzzes. It’s not an easy fuzz to characterize. It doesn’t have the porcine megatonnage of DBA’s Fuzz War. And because it has to dovetail with the octave side of the circuit, it doesn’t billow with the overtone content and sustain you would hear even in simple ’60s fuzzes like the Fuzz Face, Bosstone, Tone Bender, or Fuzzrite. Nevertheless, it has mass and spiky character and does a great job of suggesting the brutish, switchblade attitude of those ’60s circuits while staying in its lane in a mix. Studio rats may treasure it for that reason. And because fundamental notes sound so strong and relatively uncluttered, it’s also really cool for trashy but succinct sub-Stooges power chording. I’d be psyched to have this fuzz circuit alone.
Adding the octave expands the Octave Clang’s tonal palette, of course. It’s easy to set up ferocious octave fuzz sounds that work for sawing power chords and Hendrix fare. But it also shifts the tactile responsiveness of the pedal and your guitar—often demanding a rethink of your picking approach and the fretboard—that can spawn creative results. When you set the EQ, gain, and output settings on the counterclockwise side of noon and use the octave and fuzz together, picking at points close to the bridge generates almost ring-modulated and metallic Martian gamelan sounds not unlike first-gen octave fuzzes like the Ampeg Scrambler and Green Ringer. But the Octave Clang’s pre-gain tilt EQ control and the many cool ways it interacts with the gain knob and your guitar’s dials make the Clang capable of many weirder, more mysterious shades of these already odd and arresting sounds. Switching guitars can create radically different tones, too. The concise sustain I can get from a semi-hollow Rickenbacker, for instance, activates the pedal and the resulting overtones in a very different way than a Stratocaster or SG, whose different overtone profiles excite different aspects of the pedal’s response envelope.
The Verdict
If youhave an appetite for new distortion and fuzz sounds that can totally transform a hook or mood, the very simple-looking Octave Clang offers a trove of possibilities. Though I have gleefully described many of the device’s deviant capacities, neither these accounts nor Death By Audio’s reputation as noise merchants should dissuade you from approaching the Octave Clang as a very practical and unique option for fuzz and distortion tones. Psych-punk chording can take on new, more feral energy. And otherwise boneheaded hooks can become ear candy. Experimentally minded musicians, producers, and engineers with a willingness to dig a bit will find many such surprises in the well-designed, well-built, and well-executed Octave Clang.
Four and a half years after Slayer’s last performance in 2019, guitarist Kerry King returns to the throne with his first solo outing, From Hell I Rise.
When Slayer played their last show in November 2019, Kerry King already knew he had no intention of slowing down musically. What he didn’t know was that the pandemic would be the conduit to a second act. But, as German theatrical director, dramaturge, and playwright Bertolt Brecht once astutely observed, “Art is not a mirror held up to reality, but a hammer with which to shape it.”
Covid helped shape the foundation of King’s musical future, because the pandemic inadvertently created a luxury he’d rarely experienced before: time. Rather than feeling inconvenienced by the delays, he homed in on elements of his craft in ways he’d never done before, and the resulting album and his solo debut, From Hell I Rise, became his hammer.
“The pandemic really shaped the sound and the performance on this record,” says King. “It gave us some flat tires at first, because Paul [Bostaph, drums] and I both caught Covid, and it took a while for us to get back in the saddle.”
Bostaph had already digested so much of the material by the time they dove back into recording that it became a real game changer compared to how they’d worked together previously in Slayer. “It was the first [project working together where] he heard all the lyrics before he recorded, and he heard all the leads except one or two. It’s the most prepared he ever was, and being so familiar with it made it that much easier for me to play what I wanted to play.”
Kerry King - Idle Hands (Official Audio)
King is a cofounding member of Slayer and arguably one of the most instantly recognizable and well-respected thrash metal guitarists of his generation. Over nearly 40 years, he has pioneered some of the most brutal and revolutionary guitar riffs ever created in the genre. His singular use of the tremolo—pulling up more than pressing down—and the multiple tunings that pepper the band’s catalog, from D# to C# to B, are just two of the attributes that set King apart from his contemporaries. He also wrote or cowrote some of Slayer’s most incendiary songs, including “Mandatory Suicide,” “Repentless,” “Hell Awaits,” “Disciple,” and “Raining Blood.”
With Slayer—who have announced reunion dates for September 2024, five years after the group’s official terminus—King lays claim to six RIAA gold certifications, one multi-platinum plaque, and five Grammy nominations with two wins in the category of Best Metal Performance for the songs “Eyes of the Insane” and “Final Six,” both off of the Christ Illusion album.
“[My solos are] usually an afterthought, and the last thing to get done. This time everything was thought out [beforehand] and not just thrown in there.”
Known for his allegiance to the Las Vegas Raiders NFL football team, his love of snakes, and his taste for Jägermeister, King is outspoken, opinionated, and authentic. The self-proclaimed “metal kid” famously takes himself a little too seriously for some. But the real testament to his seriousness lies within his attention to detail, and the songcraft on From Hell I Rise, as well as the time he and Bostaph spent refining the material during the pandemic, is demonstrative of his commendable work ethic.
Kerry King's Gear
As King’s debut solo release, From Hell I Rise was born and shaped during the pandemic, which came on the tails of Slayer’s last show in 2019.
Guitars
- Dean USA Kerry King V Limited Edition
- Dean Kerry King V Black Satin
- Dean USA Kerry King Overlord Battalion Grey
- EMG KFK Set
- Kahler Tremolos
Amps
- Marshall JCM800 2203KK
- Marshall MF400B Mode Four
Effects
- Dunlop DCR-2SR Cry Baby Rack Wah
- Dunlop Wylde Audio Cry Baby Wah
- MXR Flanger M117R
- MXR Kerry King Ten Band EQ KFK1
- MXR Wylde Audio Overdrive
Strings & Picks
- Dunlop String Lab Series Kerry King Guitar Strings (.010–.052)
- Dunlop Triangle .73 mm
Every note seems intentional, every beat meticulously composed, yet all of it played with a spontaneity that belies its years-long incubation period. Having almost all of his solos worked out by the time he went into the studio was a refreshing approach. “They’re usually an afterthought,” he admits, “on the back burner, and the last thing to get done. This time everything was thought out [beforehand] and not just thrown in there.”
From Hell I Rise is a decisive musical statement from a man on a mission, out to prove himself after the then-apparent demise of one of thrash metal’s “Big Four,” and was eventually spurred on by a furious two-week recording session at Henson Recording Studios in Los Angeles. Featuring a band that also includes bassist Kyle Sanders (Hellyeah), guitarist Phil Demmel (Machine Head), and vocalist Mark Osegueda (Death Angel), the record rages with intensity—real musicians playing real metal in real time. In an era when technology can often smooth the edges off the human element on recordings, From Hell I Rise features fire-breathing performances from musicians who clearly honed their craft long before the crutch of technology was made available. And even though it has an intangible, nostalgic vibe to it, make no mistake, it is not some relic from the bygone past, but rather a bristling, modern-sounding tour de force.
“If you’ve ever liked any Slayer throughout any part of our history, then there’s something on this record that you’ll get into.”
From the opening salvo of “Diablo,” an instrumental call to arms that harkens back to early ’80s Iron Maiden, to the first single, “Idle Hands,” a fast, aggressive track that highlights King’s deft, articulate approach to rhythm guitar, to the detuned manic riffing in the title track, From Hell I Rise runs the gamut from classic punk to thrash to straight-up old-school heavy metal. Familiar topics, including religion and war, abound. Herculean speeds are achieved. King says the album is heavy, punky, doomy, and spooky. “If you’ve ever liked any Slayer throughout any part of our history, then there’s something on this record that you’ll get into.”
Part of the X factor on From Hell I Rise comes courtesy of producer Josh Wilbur (Korn, Lamb of God, Avenged Sevenfold, Bad Religion). King says Wilbur grasped his lead guitar sound better than anyone he’s worked with in the past. “It’s a hard thing to duplicate if you’re not standing in front of it in a live environment,” he attests. “Whatever Josh did in his mixing and mastering, it’s the closest to my live sound I’ve ever heard. I know it’s a weird adjective, but it’s really fat and ominous. I’m super happy with it.”
For From Hell I Rise, King took a new approach by planning out his solos in advance of the album’s recording.
Reigning Phoenix Music cofounder Gerardo Martinez was responsible for suggesting Wilbur to King. “We had a meeting down in Southern California,” he recalls. “I wanted to make sure I could respect the guy because if I don’t respect the guy, I’m not going to play it 10 times if he asks me to. I want somebody that will tell me to do that if I need to, and I’ll listen to him.” He says Wilbur is a wizard in the studio who brought intensity and energy to the recording sessions.
King doesn’t tinker much with his rhythm tone in the studio from song to song. He’s more of a set-it-and-forget-it kind of guy. “We just go for the main rhythm because there’s not a whole lot of things that need my sound to change,” he explains. “If it’s a spooky song or something that needs a different vibe, I’ll mess around with it. But I’m going for the home run. I’m going to set my tone and roll with it.”
“Whatever Josh [Wilbur] did in his mixing and mastering, it’s the closest to my live sound I’ve ever heard. I know it’s a weird adjective, but it’s really fat and ominous.”
King is a bona fide “super old-school” guitarist and runs through a very meat-and-potatoes signal chain for his rhythm tone. He goes from his Marshall JCM800 2203KK signature amp to Marshall MF400B Mode Four speaker cabinets with “a guitar right in front of it.” That’s it. No frills to the core. His self-assessed “primitive” approach also applied to the demos he sent to Bostaph in the early stages of writing the new album—he has no home studio to speak of. “I’m playing out of an amp that’s about as big as my boot and recording it on my phone,” he admits. “It’s deceptive how decent that sounds.”
King performing with Slayer at Nassau Coliseum in Uniondale, New York on February 14, 1991.
Photo by Ebet Roberts
Live, King runs three of his signature amps and staggers the speaker cabinets—head one will go to cabinets one and four, head two goes to cabinets two and five, and head three goes to cabinets three and six. In this setup, the heads are not powering the cabs directly below them in a column. “I really love it because I’ve got a wash of all three heads at once,” he explains.
Due to his writing style, there’s also not a whole lot of space for effects in his guitar sound. “There’s not room for things like delay, because it’s very precise,” he says. His rhythm playing is a cornerstone of his brand, and much like James Hetfield with Metallica and Scott Ian with Anthrax, he plies his trade by executing flawless, intricate rhythms at breakneck speeds. The secret he says, is all in the wrist. “A lot of people don’t know that they don’t need to play from the elbow,” he explains. “If you want any kind of speed and you want to be articulate, you’ve got to play from the wrist. You’ve got to have as minimal movement as you can.” The elbow, he explains, is too far from the pick to be the appropriate hinge for speed. “If your action is coming from your wrist, you’ve got a lot more control over the speed and the articulation. That’s how it’s got to be if you want to play this kind of music.”
“I wanted to make sure I could respect the guy because if I don’t respect the guy, I’m not going to play it 10 times if he asks me to.”
King has historically paired himself with equally capable guitarists: first Jeff Hanneman, then Gary Holt, and now Demmel. He says that he’s never had to adjust his playing style to any of them, but does note what differentiates Holt and Demmel from Hanneman, and how that affects his live performances. “I had to learn to not listen to Gary and Phil because they’re a lot more melodic than Jeff was,” he assesses. “And I don’t mean that in a detrimental way. It’s just that Jeff had his style. Gary is super melodic, and I think Phil’s even a bit more melodic.” Shifting his focus from listening to what the other guitarist is doing so he can pay attention only to what he’s playing has become King’s superpower when playing live.
With Slayer, King has six RIAA gold certifications, one multi-platinum plaque, and five Grammy nominations.
Photo by Jordi Vidal
The addition of Sanders on bass has, however, pricked up King’s ears and facilitated an adjustment on his part, albeit in the demoing and recording phase of music making. “Early on, I sent Kyle four songs with no bass just because I didn’t want to influence him, even though I’m totally capable of playing bass on a record or on demos,” he attests. “I’m like, ‘If I’m going to let this guy play bass, let’s let him come up with something.’ Maybe it’s something I wouldn’t think of because I’m a guitar player. I’m not a bass player.” Within two days, Sanders sent back the same four tracks with bass. King was blown away. “I’ve never had anybody that into playing bass—it was very refreshing for me. So every time I sent him demos, I sent him bass-free ones.”
“I just play stuff until I find something that has a strong chorus, intro, or verse rhythm. Then I try to find some friends that make it a better song, and go from there.”
King moved to New York after Slayer called it quits in 2019. Now, when he goes back to Southern California to rehearse, he gets a rental car with SiriusXM radio, and has since gone through “a real big Ritchie Blackmore renaissance,” he shares. “Man, Deep Purple was so good. Blackmore was a madman. And that band was a supergroup. I mean, [keyboardist] Jon Lord, [drummer] Ian Paice; regardless which singer you’re talking about, there’s so much talent in that band. It took me a minute to go back and realize it and now I’m like, ‘How did I not like this more [when I was younger]?’” King, perhaps influenced by this “supergroup” concept, certainly assembled an A-list cast of musicians for From Hell I Rise.
Despite the musical pedigree Bostaph, Demmel, Osegueda, and Sanders bring to his first solo album, one can’t help but wonder if King’s criteria for bandmates has as much to do with camaraderie as it does skillset. “I put a lot of songs together in ’20 and ’21,” he attests. “I just play stuff until I find something that has a strong chorus, intro, or verse rhythm. Then I try to find some friends that make it a better song, and go from there.”
YouTube It
Ignited by Kerry King’s co-lead playing, Slayer decimates the audience in Sofia, Bulgaria back in April of 2020.
A broad range of voices and a clever morph control unlock uncommon ambient reverb sounds that break the same-old-cathedral-verb mold.
Many unusual tonalities that defy affordable ambient reverb convention. High-quality controls. Morph control covers a lot of tones shifting without an expression pedal.
Setting up morph control can feel less than intuitive.
$219
Pigtronix Cosmosis
pigtronix.com
Pigtronix boss Dave Koltai is an energetic guy—particularly when you get him chatting about music. He loves the musical potential of the guitar. And while he seems to have an affection for every kind of guitar expression, from the rootsiest to the most experimental, his heart often seems to be very invested in the latter camp. Pigtronix pedals have always hinted at that affection for out-there modes of guitar thought, and the new Cosmosis stereo reverb definitely exists, in part, to serve those urges. Billed as an ambient reverb, the Cosmosis spans big-picture reverb profiles and more modest ones. And while it doesn’t necessarily achieve anything revolutionary, it features many unique sounds and a cool, practical morph control, which enables users to shift between very divergent settings using a footswitch instead of a space-hogging expression pedal. Together with the many spacious voices on tap, it helps make Cosmosis a varied and versatile time-warping device.
More Cosmic Pig, Less Space Hog
On the surface, Cosmosis’ morph control might not seem like a big deal. But as I am often tasked with getting the most possible sounds from a pedalboard that shares a suitcase with two weeks’ worth of clean clothes, I can attest to the impracticality of expression pedals and the value of effects that do more without them. With its longitudinally oriented, rectangular layout, Cosmosis doesn’t exactly have the smallest footprint. But while you could argue that a similar set of functions would have fit in a vertically oriented box, users would have paid a penalty in functionality and practicality onstage. Cosmosis’ control layout is smartly spaced, logically laid out, and pretty easy to suss before you ever touch the manual. Tone, blend, and size controls are exactly what they seem, and they’re sturdy, smooth-turning things that are satisfying to the touch. The three small push buttons, which, perhaps, look a bit too much like the black screws holding the enclosure together at the pedal’s crown, enable switching between the pedal’s three primary voicings, four presets, and the parameters governed by the morph control.
Sorting out the functionality of the morph function takes a few minutes with the manual. Getting a feel for the switching sequences required to select and assign values can feel awkward, if only because the possible combinations are so many. While many pedals with the ability to move between settings via expression pedal can only assign that movement to a single effect, the Cosmosis' morph function allows any combination of parameters to be manipulated simultaneously. And the compound tone shifts you hear between the two extremes in many Cosmosis morph cycles can be exceptionally rich and nebulous.
Returning the Mystery to Space
The Cosmosis’ morph feature is made cooler for the varied voices the pedal puts at one’s disposal. With a voice called “temple,” you’d expect the kind of churchy, choir-like, octave-up tones associated with ambient reverb. At their best, these octave-up sounds can evoke organ tones or add lushness to overdubbed layers. At their worst, they sound like sickeningly sweet, cheap cable-sci-fi soundtracks. And the Cosmosis trades the octave-up ambient reverb technique for a smoother-sounding processing that uses just harmonics to create the reverb image. And an effective, wide-ranging tone control means you can bend that high-frequency-harmonics content to much weirder ends. At its highest extremes in the temple and even more spacious cosmos settings, the tone control adds almost granular washes that sound like the electromechanical clangs from a spring reverb taken to unnatural extremes. At some lower tone settings, the Cosmosis tucks high octave content into much more subliminal spaces, which is especially cool for adding faint illumination around the edges of foggy, extra-wet, super-spacious temple and cosmos settings.
The Cosmosis’ most demure settings are fun to work with. too. There are many convincing spring-like settings that run from subdued to splashy and metallic ’60s tones. And room-style settings can give any instrument a touch of intimate Fleetwood Mac Rumors glow.The Verdict
The Cosmosis is, delightfully, more than the average generic ambient reverb. While it can generate the high-harmonic-bedazzled textures many look for in an effect of this type, its rangy and interactive tone, space, and blend controls generate octave-up colors that are uncommon and mysterious. The sounds you can create between the modest theater settings and the grandest cosmos settings span mellow room- and amp-reverb sounds and tones that evoke spaces measured in light years. The useful morph function, meanwhile, enables the player to shift between such extremes with dramatic effect. And while some players will lament that there are only four presets, that number can accommodate hugely variable tones if you’re clever and creative. At nearly $220, its price falls in line with comparable ambient reverbs. But its unique tonalities and features will make it a superior option for many players seeking less-common routes to space-time contorting bliss.
Four new micro stomps from EHX’s NYC DSP range offer old-school tones, psychedelic sounds, and straight-up sonic anarchy.
Convincing reverse tape sounds at the right settings. Forces cool alternative picking approaches. Staccato effects sound spectacular through short delay/long repeat echoes.
Only 20 bucks less than the more full-featured version. Pretty specialized for most players.
$136
Electro-Harmonix Pico Attack Decay
ehx.com
Mini pedals are immensely practical. I fantasize about traveling with a little board populated exclusively by them. And were it not for my attachment to a few old favorites, I might have already pivoted to an exclusively mini-pedal rig for any trip involving checked baggage.
Electro-Harmonix is a relative newcomer to the mini-pedal sphere. In fact, most of their efforts at miniaturization involved taking pedals like the Big Muff and Electric Mistress that were quite large and reducing them to sizes more in line with other company’s standard-sized stomps. But if they were a little late to the game, EHX, as they will, entered the marketplace with a sense of style and adventure. Each of EHX’s nine new Pico pedals, as EHX calls them, are part of the digital NYC DSP series. Curiously, confinement to the digital realm means this set of Pico releases is without legendary EHX pedals that would be logical candidates for miniaturization—most notably the Big Muff. But what the new Pico pedals lack in predictability, they make up for in color: Some of EHX’s most interesting pedal ideas are part of this series.
In imagining possible combinations of these nine pedals, it occurred to me that you could fashion a lot of very unique tone palettes from just a few of them. Though each of the pedals reviewed here—the Pico Attack Decay, Pico Oceans 3-Verb, Pico Canyon Echo, and Pico Deep Freeze—are evaluated on their own merits, they were selected with the notion of creating a little psychedelic sound laboratory. And while you can wring conventional sounds from these four pedals, their capacity for weaving weird and complex patterns of sound speaks to the exciting potential of these little stomps and EHX’s enduring sense of irreverence and invention.
Pico Attack Decay
The original EHX Attack Decay, an analog volume envelope that first appeared around 1980, was called a “tape reverse simulator” for its ability to generate reverse-tape-like volume swells. It’s an odd bird—even by EHX’s lofty standards. Next to the analog original, which came in a Deluxe Memory Man-sized enclosure, the Pico version is pico indeed. But this version is derived from the digital reimagination of the effect that appeared in 2019. That permutation includes a built-in fuzz, expression control, presets, an effects loop, and preset capability, but I’d guess that more than a few players will be more tempted by this smaller, streamlined version.
It's easy to create the volume swell effects that give the Pico Attack Decay its tape reverse simulator handle. You put the pedal in mono mode (activated by the small poly button), set the attack knob around the 10 o’clock position, and park the decay to the right of noon. The reverse tape effect can be pretty uncanny, and it’s fun to play leads and melodies using pre-bends, odd intervals, and off-beat timing to achieve more authentically disorienting reverse effects. These settings also make the pedal a nice stand-in for a volume pedal for simple melody lines. Certain fast attack times mated to shorter decay times produce clipped, no-sustained tones or stuttering, fractured tremolo textures. The former sounds especially amazing paired with fast echoes and long repeat times from the Canyon delay—creating spacey Joe Meek-style percolations. Used in mono mode exclusively, the Attack Decay can seem limited. Using poly mode doesn’t add oodles of additional textures, but it does often add a vowelly, mutant flange/filter effect that’s good for alien envelope-filter tones, which, again, sound pretty incredible with a heap of echo.
For the right player, the Pico Attack Decay can be an effective way to reshape instrument timbre and create interesting, off-kilter versions of volume-swell, envelope, and even bizarre staccato modulation effects. At just 20 bucks less than the larger, full-featured Attack Decay, the small size may be the main appeal here. But that mini footprint can make the difference between a niche effect making the cut when space is tight.
The Pico Canyon Echo is as engaging as any delay I can think of in a package this size. It’s flexible and full of surprises, thanks in large part to the cool filter control, a super-wide 8-millisecond-to-3-second delay range, and an infinite repeats function that effectively functions as a looper.
Sans filtering, the Pico Canyon’s basic delay voice is fairly neutral, which is no bad thing, and it’s certainly not chilly the way some digital delays can be. Introducing the filter, however, steers the Pico Canyon along unique tone vectors, particularly when you use the super-short, ADT-style delays. The filter moves between neutral no-filter sounds at noon and low-pass and high-pass settings on either side of the dial. Depending on where you set the filter and feedback control, these short delays can produce ring-modulation-like tones, lo-fi AM radio colors, and resonances and feedback effects that change dramatically depending on your pickups, amplifier, and playing dynamics. It also yields unexpected sounds that you don’t necessarily associate with delay. The filter control isn’t exclusively for oddball sounds, though. The low-pass filter adds darkness to repeats that hints at BBD delay sounds and is particularly effective for adding fog to long feedback settings. The high-pass filter, meanwhile, can lend digital crispness or ringing and howling Space Echo-style resonances with long feedback times.
Though weird sounds abound in the Canyon, it is a delay of great utility too. The tap-division button enables fast switching between eighth-note, dotted eighth-note, and quarter-note divisions, and it features a tap tempo function. With an appealing $149 price tag, I’d be tempted by the Pico canyon if it was twice the size. The combination of small size, straightforward functionality, interactivity, and flat-out fun make it an extra attractive delay option that will tempt players across many styles.
Like the Pico Canyon, the Oceans 3-Verb inhabits a crowded market space that ranges from ultra-low-priced imports to fancier fare. But while the Pico Canyon distinguishes itself from the competition with a wide range of straight-ahead to weird sounds, the Oceans 3-Verb mostly focuses on fundamentals. Here, that means digital emulations of spring, plate, and hall reverbs. The 3-Verb’s one great wild-card feature is its infinite reverb, which works in the hall and plate settings. It’s an awesome addition that ups the fun quotient exponentially and makes the 3-Verb an appealing option for noise, drone, ambient, and other experimental artists.
The 3-Verb’s voices each capture the spirit and quirks of their inspirations—often with great fidelity. The most subdued voices all add classy ambience that pairs nicely with drive pedals, adding air without turning gain-activated overtones to a filthy wash. Differences between the hall and plate reverbs are most discernible at these less-intense levels. Hall reverbs are tight and reactive with the tone, time, and pre-delay levels at modest levels. Add a little treble and you’ll hear a nice approximation of tile reflections. The plate reverb sounds most distinctively authentic with a little extra treble, pre-delay, and decay time, lending the slightly metallic and ghostly overtones that make real plate reverb so delicious. Both hall and plate reverbs can be taken to stranger lands, particularly when you add a generous helping of pre-delay, which can evoke Kevin Shields’ reverse-reverb tricks or add endless miles of ambience. At these more extreme settings, the hall reverb tends to emphasize high-octave content, while the plate is more diffuse and spectral. In both settings you can use the infinite reverb effect, generating huge washes that are beautiful when mixed with droning feedback.
As solid as the plate and hall reverbs are here, the spring reverb is the hit of the bunch. It doesn’t have quite as much body as a real Fender Reverb unit or the splashy reverb in the mid-’60s Fender Vibrolux I used for comparison. It’s also basically brighter than those two reverbs. But it is really no less awesome or fun for those differences. At advanced tone settings and in the large tank mode, it practically becomes a caricature of spring reverb. This is not a diss. I’ve gone looking for this tone many times in order to achieve extra-big-picture surf or Fillmore psychedelia sounds and come up short. It’s the kind of spring reverb that can absolutely slice through a recorded mix—even a busy one. I’d even venture that many players would pick this over the real thing.
Not every player needs an EHX Freeze. But a lot of players don’t know what they’re missing. The Freeze inhabits an interesting place among guitar effects. It is, in effect, a little sampler that grabs your signal and freezes it for a given period—sometimes infinitely. A freeze is different than just a sustained tone. There is a lag in a freeze capture that can add many overtones. They can be pretty or ugly, depending on the moment you capture, the relationship between dry and effected signal, and how long you freeze the audio picture you capture. Put another way, the Freeze can be a drone machine, a chilly digital cimbalom, a tamboura in a box, a synth-generated sine wave, a freeze-frame ring modulator, or a distant ship’s horn sounding through the fog. Getting predictable and harmonious outcomes can take a steady hand, a bit of concentration, a smooth touch, and familiarity with how the Freeze’s interesting controls interact. But in and among these strange tone relationships await interesting sounds that can add gobs of extra vocabulary to your electric guitar expressions.
The Deep Freeze features three modes of operation: latch, moment, and auto. In latch, Deep Freeze grabs and holds your signal at the moment you press the footswitch. In moment mode, the pedal holds the freeze for as long as you hold the foostswitch. In auto mode, the Deep Freeze grabs the last note you play, enabling you to freeze each note in a sequence. Controls for dry and effect manage the critical balance between dry and effected signal. Gliss controls the speed at which an existing freeze morphs into a new one. The speed/layer knob controls the volume envelope in auto or moment mode, and in latch mode, it controls the volume of the previous freeze as you layer in new ones. That probably sounds complex, but it’s surprisingly easy to feel out the interactivity between these controls.
If there is a fundamental bit of knowledge with which you must approach the Deep Freeze, it’s that it likes to capture pure notes or chord tones without too much dissonance, which will cause fluttering freeze tones colored with cold digital artifacts. If you want a prettier, more unadulterated freeze—particularly in latch and moment modes—it’s critical that you freeze the note or chord at the most harmonious point of its bloom. If you hit the switch right as you pick a note or hit a chord, overtones from pick attack that might otherwise go unnoticed turn into dissonant rattle. Likewise, pitch changes or irregularities—from hitting your vibrato arm as you freeze a chord, for instance— will turn into the same digital clatter. In auto and moment modes, I got best results by using a soft picking touch and waiting for the sweetest moment of a note or chord bloom to hit the switch. Harmonics, too, can make beautiful drones if you capture them at their most beautifully blossoming moment.
Low-gain overdrive? Tell that to the amp you just blew up with this Jekyll and Hyde stomp.
Snappy-to-nasty OD colors. Dynamically responsive. Easy to dial in a wide range of tones. Nice price. Momentary switch option.
Bass-heavy settings can sound cloudy.
$129
Electro-Harmonix Spruce Goose
ehx.com
I was very late to discover the Marshall Bluesbreaker. There’s no reason, really. We just didn’t cross paths often, and unlike, say, a Boss SD-1 or something, there wasn’t one lurking around every practice joint. Last year, though, I got to hang out with Marshall’s recent re-issue and was sad to see it go. So, I was equally stoked to get my hands on EHX’s Spruce Goose, which uses the Bluesbreaker as a point of departure.
The Spruce Goose (and the circuit it’s derived from) are popularly regarded as low-gain drives. I’m never sure where the threshold between low gain and something nastier lives. But the Goose sometimes pulls to the aggro side of that line like a mad dog on a leash. It doesn’t take a lot of work to make the Spruce Goose explosively alive, and it’s quick to wake up a thin amp. Telecaster bridge pickups can sound firecracker hot and SG Burstbuckers beastly. With the latter, you can transform any decent black-panel Fender-style amp turned up to 7 or 8 into something a lot like a Marshall in the service of Angus. Those single-coil sounds are my favorite, though. Via the Goose, they come through clear, snarly, rowdy, and rude. That clarity crossed with filth extends the Goose’s utility. High-octane folk rock arpeggios, Zep’ I lead stingers, Black Flag grind, and Sonic Youth yowl all sound perfectly at home in the cradle of the Spruce Goose. Mind the boost from that lift switch, though. It’s a little like pouring nitroglycerin on a stack of twitchy dynamite. Hearing it blow is a rambunctious pleasure.