If you’ve ever picked up a heavily distorted guitar and yelled into the pickups, you’ll dig the Drum Thing by Electro-Faustus.
Electro-Faustus bills itself as a "noise device" builder. Whereas some companies pride themselves for making replicas of famous effects, Electro-Faustus wants to offer something new.
For the past few weeks, I’ve been checking out the Drum Thing, a passive, battery-free, output-only percussion box. Think of it as a sound-hole pickup in a metal box that you can stomp on, brush, tap on, sing into or all-out scream at.
I found two distinct uses for it: tapping on it to build metronome-like practice loops, and placing a ton of effects pedals after it and creating maddening noise loops.
Clip No. 1 demos a purely clean sound. I just plugged the Drum Thing into my computer and tapped away.
Clip No. 2 is where I built a helpful practice loop. I recorded two tracks of the Drum Thing. My “snare” is the clean sound of the Drum Thing. My “kick drum” is the Drum Thing with a Boss octave pedal after it to lower the pitch. On top of all that I recorded a rhythm guitar track I could solo over.
For Clips No. 3 and 4, I had some fun with my Digitech Synth Wah and an overdrive pedal after the Drum Thing, creating some wild rhythmic ambience.
Web: electrofaustus.com
Street Price: $59.95. There's a smaller version, the Drum Thing Mini, for $39.95.
You can't believe everything you read on the Internet, but Billy Voight is a gear reviewer, bassist and guitarist from Pennsylvania. He has Hartke bass amps and Walden acoustic guitars to thank for supplying some of the finest gear on his musical journey. Need Billy's help in creating noise for your next project? Drop him a line at thisguyonbass@gmail.com.
