With only three controls, this deceptively powerful pedal was designed to offer everything from light overdrive to full on distortion with all the clarity and blissful grinding.
"Sometimes pedals can change. Parts drift, pots break, transistors go bad. They go to new homes; they get neglected and resold. Sometimes people get in there and try to revive them to their original state and sometimes they just throw whatever is laying around inside and hope it does the trick. In this case, we’re pretty sure all the above happened to the fuzz pedal that made its way to James Murphy and ended up finding a forever home with LCD Soundsystem."
The Chelsea has been the chosen bass fuzz for several LCD Soundsystem recordings and has traveled around the world with them.
"It has been beat up and taped back together. It looks like it shouldn’t work but it always delivers. It is old, it is fragile, and it sounds massive. Too good to retire yet too tired to keep going. That is where we came in. We were tasked with replicating the exact sound of this pedal but it a reliable format that can withstand the stresses of this modern world. No easy feat, for sure, but we persevered and have brought you the Chelsea."
Features
- All-analog signal path
- True bypass
- Electronic relay-based switching
- Limited lifetime warranty
- Current Draw: 10 ma
- Input Impedance: 50 kΩ
- Output Impedance: <10 kΩ
- Retail Price: $179.00
Named after the guitar shop in which it was purchased back in 1989, the Chelsea recreates all the idiosyncrasies of the original but without the threat of total collapse. With only three controls, this deceptively powerful pedal offers you everything from light overdrive to full on distortion with all the clarity and blissful grinding that make the original so special. Just like the original, a Tone On/Off switch allows you to remove the tone control from the circuit, opening up a whole new world of midrange grind. Switch it off for a simplified and straightforward attack or leave it on for a full-bodied distortion with loads of low end with a slight natural scoop. Roll up the Sustain for wall-shaking bass notes or sustaining lead and adjust the Tone for a wild and wide frequency response from aggressive top end to low-end rumble. This thing is deep and will cover pretty much anything you can throw at it.
Each Chelsea is handmade at EarthQuaker Devices headquarters in always sunny Akron, Ohio, USA.
Pedals, pedals, and more pedals! Enter Stompboxtober Day 13 for your shot at today’s pedal from Electro-Harmonix!
Electro-Harmonix Hell Melter Distortion Pedal
With its take on the cult-classic, chainsaw distortion pedal, the EHX Hell Melter takes distortion to its extremes. The Hell Melter features expanded controls and tonal capabilities, allowing the already in-your-face sound of the pedal to broaden by switching to more open clipping options and boosting the internal voltage for increased headroom, less compression, and more attack.
Originally designed as the ultimate in high-gain tone, this world-famous distortion circuit is known for the death metal sounds of Sweden’s Entombed and the shoegaze wash of My Bloody Valentine. It’s even found a home in the rig of David Gilmour!
The EHX Hell Melter’s expanded control set includes Gain and Level controls, and a powerful active EQ featuring with parametric mids for improved versatility. The Dry level control allows for blending your input signal for improved low-end when used with a bass or even blending in other distorted tones.
Boost Footswitch engages an input gain boost and volume boost which is internally adjustable. The Normal/Burn switch toggles between the classic chainsaw sound and the more open clipping option.
Big guitar-building workshops keep it clean, and so can you!
Developing good, clean workshop practices will help you save time and money.
Who doesn’t like a sweet, sustaining, saturated guitar sound? I know I do, but I also love a clear and full clean tone maybe even more. Dirty or clean, to me a guitar sounds like a million bucks when the tubes are glowing and the playing flows. But most of the time I’m in the workshop making lots of dirt, and I don’t mean the overdriven amplifier kind. Making guitars can be a dirty business. Carving wood, plastic, and steel into a majestic instrument creates a lot of mess, and eventually you have to sweep your way clear.
Half a century ago, a mentor passed on this advice: The best way to clean up a mess is to not make one in the first place. Maybe this sounds quaint, but I assure you that it is good for business—any business. It doesn’t matter if you make pedals, guitars, amps, or even music, mess is money down the drain. Not only that, it’s a psychological strain on you that saps your energy and makes you careless.
When I worked at Fender, I was part of a team that was charged with revamping departments for efficiency, safety, and worker well-being. I can’t say that we made a huge difference, but I learned a lot that I could apply to my own shop and a host of other businesses. One thing there we didn’t have to fix was cleanliness. Despite the gargantuan scale of the enterprise, all of the factories are incredibly clean, especially considering the amount of materials that get processed. It reminded me of the race cars and shops of Roger Penske, who understood that a clean, organized workplace sets the tone for excellence. It’s also difficult to pinpoint problems when areas are cluttered, and you can’t see what’s going on clearly.
Beyond the obvious advantages of keeping things organized, there is another benefit created by keeping things clean, one that I’m surprised that more shops I visit (and see in videos) don’t understand. Sooner or later, you’re going to have to stop making your product and clean up. When you’re buried in debris, straightening up is time-consuming, and time is money. When you determine your cost per unit, whether it’s guitars, amps, or even rehearsal time, do you factor in the hours you spend cleaning up? It may not seem like much, but it can really add up. Regardless of if you own a shop or are in a band, if you create a tangle every time you work, the time you spend undoing it is time you could have been with your friends, family, or doing anything else.
A well-designed work area that reduces clutter will save your health and save you money. You don’t have to be a big organization to justify some basic cleanliness improvements like a good dust-collection system, either. It doesn’t have to be a huge investment. There are a slew of affordable mobile dust-collectors/vacuums with adjustable arms that can be rolled from task to task.
"When you determine your cost per unit, whether it’s guitars, amps, or even rehearsal time, do you factor in the hours you spend cleaning up?"
Stop blowing dust off your workbench or machinery onto the floor—picking it up later is like throwing profit away. Everybody benefits because cleanliness improves efficiency that reduces passing unneeded costs on to your customers. Over the course of a year, cleaning up 60 minutes a week adds up to almost seven days’ worth of time you could be using for something better, and who doesn’t want an extra week?
I’ve found that if you build cleanup time into your daily routine, it reduces stress as well. It’s important to create procedures that promote a constant state of improvement and order. After a gig, pro techs have a mandated way of breaking down and stowing gear that avoids confusion when the next setup happens. Daily routines of maintenance and cleanup catch problems before they stop the show or cripple production. If you habitually clean the spilled beer off your cables and amplifier, you’re making it easier for yourself in the long run. I know this all seems pretty obvious to some of you, but I’ve learned from master Kaizen practitioners that there’s always a higher level to reach for. If you are a one-person shop or a weekend warrior musician, those steps can really make a difference.
I suppose the reverse is true for me. If I apply this multi-tiered improvement regime to my guitar playing, I’d probably be a lot happier with my proficiency. An old dog can learn new tricks, and that’s exactly what I mean to do. So when I step on that distortion pedal, it will be the only dirt I deal with.