RatingsPros:A wide range of tube-warmed tremolo sounds with a friendly control set. Cons: Might be a tad conservative for sonic buccaneers. Street: $199 Fender MTG Tube Tremolo fender.com | Tones:  Ease of Use:  Build/Design: Value:  |
ScrewedCircuitz
Canadian company ScrewedCircuitz is Dan Roleau and Kassia Lebeau, and synthesis is their game—aimed at recording, live sampling, and the spontaneous creation of freaky, haunted-house type atmospherics. Dan builds the circuits and Kassia does the design of the enclosures. They have many strange creations, but the Ring Mod Skull pedal is one of the visually strangest. It offers a passive ring modulator with eight oscillators, lo-fi pre-amplification, and feedback loop options—all built inside a replica of a human skull!
There are controls for each of the eight different oscillators in the Ring Mod Skull. Each knob controls oscillator pitch independently. Each oscillator has its own switch that gives the user the option to flip between resistors and diodes, in order to create two different sounds within the matrix mixer. Courtesy of Dan Roleau and Kassia Labeau or ScrewedCircuitz
“We love matching the enclosure to our sound,” says Roleau. Hence, also, the Harsh Noise Coffin Synth, which is a tiny device shaped like a wooden coffin that sounds like a box full of snakes … until it starts to whoosh and whoop.
“We were inspired to create something dark, atmospheric, and harsh all-in-one,” Roleau says about the Ring Mod Skull. “The pedal is based on our very first Zombie-Head Synth, which was noisy as hell and freaked everyone out because of the realism of the enclosure. The Skull circuit is handmade from scratch using whatever components were laying around at the time. We added cool LEDs because … well, because why not? Who doesn’t like ’em? We aim to please ourselves before anyone else, so when someone appreciates our work it’s a bonus.”
Almost all ScrewedCircuitz effects and sound circuits are built inside of unique, one-of-a-kind enclosures. Plastic toy organs and locomotives, repurposed keyboards, and Walkman cassette players are all fair game, although builds like their Lo-Fi Sampler, Lo-Fi Looper, and some of their other sound twisters come in conventional enclosures.
Prepare for some uneasy listening, but hang in through the end to hear the full range of buzzing, grinding, hissing, warbling, and even vaguely threatening sounds that come from this little box of horrors.
Recorded via Shure SM57 and Apogee Duet to Garage Band with Guild X-175 and Fender Vibro Champ.
The first set of arpeggiated passages is played in LFO mode at various rates, depths, and filter settings.
At 0:51, the pedal’s “high” range is altered to generate a bouncier delay.
RatingsPros:Capable of switching from conventional to demented sounds. Provokes unorthodox creative decisions. Cons: Learning curve can be steep. It can be hard to return to identical settings without presets. Street: $199 Alexander Superball Kinetic Modulator alexanderpedals.com | Tones: Ease of Use:  Build/Design: Value: |