Modern Mutants

Orginally printed in Guitar World, December 2006.

10 weird pedals that live among us.

METASONIX BUTT PROBE

With a name like “Butt Probe,” it’s gotta be good. This Metasonix pedal generates its excruciatingly painful distortion tones with tubes originally designed to broadcast Mayberry RFD.

Z.VEX RINGTONE

Every Z.Vex pedal is weird in its own right (the Fuzz Factory is a GW all-time favorite), but the Ringtone takes an already wacked-out ring modulator and adds eight carrier-pitch adjustment knobs, a sequencer and a random mode to unleash previously unimaginable audio strangitude.

LOVETONE MEATBALL

Boasting more tweakable knobs than a wet T-shirt contest in Cancun, the Lovetone Meatball is probably the most versatile envelope follower/trigger filter ever conceived. From barking bowwows to drippy quacks, a barnyard of funky fun awaits.

ROGER LINN DESIGN ADRENALINN II

While the Adrenalinn may be more highbrow than the usual acid fantasies of the boutique-pedal universe, it delivers incredibly weird beat-synched random filter and “talking” guitar effects that sound like they walked right out of some hippie’s hallucination.

DANELECTRO DSD-1 SHIFT DADDY

The Shift Daddy would be an ordinary analog delay effect except it allows you to use a rocker pedal to manually adjust the delay time and create whammylike pitch bends and buzz-saw sounds.

ROBOTALK

Essentially a clone of the coveted Oberheim/Maestro VCF/Sample and Hold pedal, Robotalk lives up to its name by producing gurgling vocal sounds and cyborgian cries.

GIG-FX CHOPPER

More than an ordinary tremolo, rotating speaker, auto-panning effect, the Chopper lets you manually vary frequency with its rocker pedal to produce head-spinning psychedelic sounds. Just ask Tool’s Adam Jones.

ELECTRO-HARMONIX HOG HARMONIC OCTAVE GENERATOR

If the ability to generate multiple octaves and harmonic overtones from single notes or chords sounds like your bucket of sonic slop, the HOG will make you happier than a pig in shit.

PIGTRONIX EP-1 ENVELOPE PHASER

Here’s another porky beast to appease ham-fisted guitarists. The Pigtronix EP-1 creates incredibly fat phasing effects with stinky resonance and gluttonous gain.

MID-FI ELECTRONICS GLITCH COMPUTER

From sputtering fuzz to frying audio damage, the Glitch Computer can make your guitar sound like a dropkicked Tivo or a PC slowly sinking into a swamp. Check out Mid-Fi’s Pitch Pirate and Random Number Generator for further sonic debauchery.