In the market for effect pedals that capture some of rock’s most legendary and coveted tones, add in a variety of far-out, unique sounds, and wrap it all in eye-popping enclosures? Look no further than Interstellar Audio Machine’s new trio of stompboxes.
And Guitar World’s resident pedal geek, R.J. Ronquillo, is only too happy to have gotten his hands on them. As R.J. happily shows off, there’s the Octonaut Hyperdrive, the company’s take on a Klon-style circuit, which has “that really nice transparent and dynamic overdrive character, but it also sounds killer cranked up all the way,” he says.
There’s also the Fuzzsquatch Fuzzdrive, “Interstellar’s take on a Big Muff Pi distortion, fuzz, kind of everything in between – the good stuff,” R.J. enthuses, and, finally, the Marsling Octafuzzdrive, a combination fuzz-plus-octave-up based on the fOXX Tone Machine that also boasts a midrange switch for some tonal variation.
“I’m going to show you a couple different settings on all of these, as well as examples using a Strat with single coils and a Les Paul with humbuckers,” R.J. says before digging in.
First up? The Octonaut Hyperdrive, which, as you can hear in R.J.’s demo, will get your tone swooning with Klon-like sweetness in no time – and at a fraction of the cost of obtaining one of those rare boxes.
But that’s not all: you also get an all-analog circuit, an internal switch for selecting True or Buffered bypass, a dual-ganged gain pot for easy tone-dialing, rare Germanium diodes and modern IC3 circuitry for maximum headroom. The result is the best version of your guitar signal to push into the amp, getting you that heavenly overdrive you want. It does the job for avowed Octonaut users like Derek Trucks, Guns N’ Roses’ Richard Fortus and Widespread Panic’s Jimmy Herring, and clearly R.J. is impressed as well.
Next, R.J. moves on over to the Fuzzsquatch Fuzzdrive, which recreates Electro-Harmonix’s famed late-‘70s circuit, but with the addition of op-amps to achieve its beautiful sustaining distortion. Boasting top-mounted jacks, Volume, Tone and Sustain knobs and a Tone Bypass Switch, the Fuzzsquatch puts plenty of fur on R.J.’s riffs and licks. Early adopters of the mighty Fuzzsquatch include pros like Pete Loefflerller of Chevelle and Dave Schools of Widespread Panic fame, who uses the Fuzzsquatch to pump up his bass tones and show the true power and versatility it offers players.
Finally, R.J. plugs into the Marsling Octafuzzdrive, a pedal as unique as its name. The Marsling builds on the discontinued ’70-era fOXX, but with two significant modifications: First, the octave up has been moved to a footswitch instead of the original’s toggle, for on/off multifunctionality on the fly. Essentially the Octafuzzdrive operates as a two-in-one fuzz or combo fuzz/octave pedal. Secondly, a tone control toggle switch has been added to allow players to choose between three different treble/mids side tone capacitors. The Marsling has found its pro fanatics too, like MammothWVH’s Jon Jourdan, who recently rocked the stage at England’s famous Wembley Stadium.
To hear just how wild things can get with the Marsling Octafuzzdrive, check out R.J. in action above.
And to have as much fun as R.J.’s clearly having, head over to Interstellar Audio Machines now.
