All of the electronics were seriously replaced with the help of an electrician friend. "The front pup is now a Sustainiac," says Sevink. "It's very, very sensitive to interference—a sheer drama to build into your guitar. It's like having a built-in EBow—fantastic!" Though the trimmings look unusual, Sevink swears they don't affect playability: "It's balanced, easy to play, and it sounds beautiful on everything from shoegaze to metal."
Sevink developed severe sleep apnea a few years ago and felt too run-down to play music "I had to stop with just about all my bands," he recalls. "I felt I might as well be dead if I couldn't make music anymore." For a while Sevink tried sleeping with a continuous-air-pressure machine. "After trying a million different masks, I gave up," he says. "I decided I'd rather live with the illusion that I was sleeping well then be kept awake by this Borg-like contraption meant to make me sleep better."
But that's why this guitar has so much emotional value for Sevink. "To make a long story short," he says, "in building this guitar, I've used various parts of the sleep apnea equipment I gathered over the years. This guitar represents saying goodbye to a lesser period in my life, and reminds me how I retook the wheel to rearrange my life so I could return to doing what I love most: making music."
Send your guitar story to submissions@premierguitar.com.
[Updated 9/22/21]
The Beast’s 3-band EQ is key to the pedal’s sonic possibilities. Treble blends the signal coming from the treble capacitor with the signal going to the bass and mids controls. Turning it up reduces overall volume a bit, while turning it down adds bass and midrange. Reps from Celestial say they could have defeated the loss in volume with a larger treble cap, but found that the smaller cap gave the pedal the voice they were after. Celestial also designed the circuit with as little noise filtering as possible in order to maximize signal pass. The unit can be powered with a 9V battery, a center-negative 9V adapter, or an 18V center-negative adapter, the latter of which yields higher headroom.
Ratings
Pros:
Muscular, touch-responsive distortion. Wide-ranging, interactive controls. Built like a rock.
Cons:
Can be difficult to balance dirty tones with an amp’s clean channel.
Tones:
Ease of Use:
Build/Design:
Value:
Street:
$179
Company
celestialeffects.com
Zodiac Killer
With a Gibson Les Paul, a Soldano Lucky 13, and the Aries’ controls at noon, the pedal unleashed a brutal, meaty distortion. The midrange was cutting, with a trace of cocked-wah honk—but with a very muscular body underneath. It reminded me a lot of Alice in Chains and early Undertow-era Tool, and was perfect for heavy dropped-D riffing and sustained leads on low notes. Not too many high-gain distortion pedals highlight mids this prominently, and according to Celestial that was a design goal. The mid sweep is very wide, and the pedal’s more dimensional midrange has presence akin to a cranked Marshall. The Aries’ EQ section, too, has a very Marshall-like response and feel. The mids and lows react interestingly to changes from the treble knob—rising and receding in prominence along a nice, even curve as I increased or reduced high end.
The gain section is interactive and varied, too. Lowering the gain to 10 o’clock and increasing the drive to 3 o’clock yielded fierce, Dual Rectifier-like growl with searing highs and tight lows—perfect for palm-muted riffing. The midrange control, meanwhile, is both sensitive and rangy at these drive levels—making it a cinch to achieve heavy, scooped Dimebag Darrell tones. Raising gain to 2 o’clock and dropping drive to 11 o’clock expanded the harmonic content of the low end and opened up the high end, yielding a crunchy, British-style overdrive that was smooth and extraordinarily touch responsive. And when I lowered the volume controls on my Les Paul, the roaring distortion morphed into a sweet, purring, plexi-like overdrive.
The VerdictFor all-out aggressive distortion with amp-like responsiveness, it’s hard to go wrong with the Celestial Effects Aries Beast Distortion. It has more than enough gain to satisfy the can’t-get-enough-dirt set. Its onboard EQ and dual distortion circuits offer a lot of versatility, and it’s a sturdy mother of a pedal. All the range in the EQ and drive section means it demands a little practice and get-acquainted time. But the investment will, for many, reveal a thrilling and uncommonly versatile distortion tool.
Ratings
Pros:
Captures the classic bass-filter spirit. Many usable filter effects.
Cons:
Knob positions are difficult to read. No battery option.
Tones:
Ease of Use:
Build/Design:
Value:
Street:
$149
Eden CaliforniWAH
edenamps.com
Gettin’ Deep
The CaliforniWAH’s controls are fairly intuitive: The effect-level knob adjusts, well, just that. The low-point knob sets the frequency where the effect kicks in. Resonance regulates the amount of feedback at the cutoff frequency, while sensitivity determines the pedal’s response relative to the player’s dynamics. A red “voice” push button toggles between two tonal contours. (More on those in a bit.)
The CaliforniWAH is reassuringly sturdy, with an industrial steel chassis, knurled metal knobs, and durable pots. The pedal gets its juice from an included 15V power supply, and can’t run on battery power. While I like the pedal’s overall fit and feel, I found knob settings difficult to read while the pedal is in use because the side-positioned value indicators are best viewed from the side.
Up for the Down Strokes
Few effects are as fun as an envelope filter. I auditioned the CaliforniWAH between a Fender Jazz and an Ashdown Drophead C115H combo. With the sensitivity knob at maximum and low-point and resonance set low, the pedal goes pyow with every pluck. Lower the sensitivity, and the pedal engages its filter more selectively. Gently plucked or picked notes burble beneath the surface, while a well-placed smack yields a juicy bwap.
With the voice knob pressed in, the CaliforniWAH produces a deep throb. Toggling out elicits a quicker quack with more midrange bite. The low-point and resonance controls work together to determine the effect’s depth and height, so to speak. With low point at minimum, notes take on considerable sub-bass heft. With the knob rolled past noon, the splat factor diminishes, but the tone remains rotund. Similarly, the resonance knob governs the amount of squawk. Fully off, notes can sound a bit murky, but clarity increases as you raise the resonance setting.
Bass filters can be a tricky in practice. If you set the sensitivity wrong relative to your attack, you get garbled mumbles where there should be authoritative thwaps. Fortunately, the CaliforniWAH makes light work of finding the right settings for fingerstyle, pickstyle, or thumbstyle play.
The Verdict
Anyone who thinks they can clone Bootzilla by kicking on a stompbox is crazy. But with its quality build and wide range of voices—at the right price–Eden’s CaliforniWAH can be a valuable tool for any would-be Funkateer looking to get out and “do that stuff.”
Watch the Review Demo: