EarthQuaker Devices

Notes: Sometimes pedals can change. Parts drift, pots break, transistors go bad. They go to new homes; they get neglected and resold. Sometimes people get in there and try to revive them to their original state and sometimes they just throw whatever is laying around inside and hope it does the trick. In this case, EQD are pretty sure all the above happened to the fuzz pedal that made its way to James Murphy and ended up finding a forever home with LCD Soundsystem.

Chelsea really does have something special. It's heavy without being too heavy, clean but not too clean. A simple set of controls yet it has an expansive array of tones that makes it very versatile on a wide variety of instruments, has clarity when you need it and can blur all discernable lines when you don't. It still retains the familiar foundation of the classic fuzz it was intended to be, but something special happened to it over the years and it has very much grown into its own thing

Notes: EarthQuaker Devices is proud to introduce you to your new best bud, Gary. This little big guy was dreamt up by the one and only Lee Kiernan from the crushing and most necessary band, Idles!

Gary started as a simple request to create a compact version of the now discontinued Gray Channel, which was a mainstay on Lee's board and a big part of his main drive tone. This was all fine and good, and sounded quite sick, but it was worth and exploring his dark side a little more, Gary after dark, Saturday night Gary. So, he was sat down and began the trek of figuring old Gare-Bear out once and for all. The result is a real exercise in light and dark; smooth to shredded and everything in between.

Gary's right brain consists of a dynamic and destructive fuzz that is both domineering and interactive. It is a ripping fuzz tone with an envelope-controlled variable pulse width and enough volume to blow everything up. This nasty little fuzz turns the signal into a square wave and allows you to dynamically adjust the duty cycle with pick attack. Yes! Controls the sensitivity of the envelope. When this is all the way down you will get an unadulterated thick and heavy square wave fuzz tone that will sustain for days and go dead quiet when you stop playing. As you increase the Yes! control, the envelope becomes more interactive, and the pulse width narrows the harder you hit it. As the pulse width narrows, the tone becomes more nasal and biting until it gets so narrow that Gary goes to his dark place and disappears completely. In other words, with higher sensitivity settings, the sound will disappear entirely and come cruising back to Gary's big guy tone. With proper playing dynamics, this creates a very cool effect that can sound like an exploding amp coming in and out of life, blown through a phase shifter.

This effect can also be controlled with an expression pedal for manual operation or for finding just the right pulse width to cut through the mix for a set-and-forget operation. When using an expression pedal, Yes! operates in conjunction with the expression pedal to set the peak of the sweep. Set Yes! to the desired stopping point and express yourself as you please without worry of taking Gary over the edge!

Oosh acts as the master volume for Gary's nasty side. There is an insane amount of volume on tap so use this control wisely!

Gary's left brain displays his softer side. This is a simple and natural sounding overdrive that keeps your tone lively and drives your amp crazy. This side is based on the green channel of the Gray Channel, which is Earthquaker's take on the classic little yellow overdrive that started it all. Lee used this pedal with the clipping switch permanently set to the middle position, which removes all the diodes from the circuit, producing a full-bodied, cutting opamp distortion with plenty of volume on tap. Earthquaker have reproduced that tone here with exacting precision. Go sets the opamp drive and can range from a simple full-range clean boost all the way up to a smooth and natural distortion. In conjunction with That's It, which is the master volume for the drive side, you can use Gary's softer side as a clean boost to push your amp into overdrive or turn up Go and use all of Gary's internal magic to create the finely tuned dirt you desire.

Gary's signal path is fuzz into overdrive for total tonal integrity and cannot be changed. This is where Gary put his foot down.

Each and every Gary was softly brought to life by the delicate hands of EarthQuaker Devices in the elegantly unrefined canal-front city of Akron, Ohio USA.

Notes: Hizumitas was designed for the one and only Wata from the legendary experimental band Boris, one of the heaviest bands ever to come out of Japan. The trio of guitar sorceress Wata, drummer and vocalist Atsuo, and double-neck bassist, guitarist and vocalist Takeshi has almost 100 releases filled with genre and brain-melting music.

In their nearly three decades together, Boris has infused doom, hardcore, thrash, noise-core, ambient, free improv, drone, psychedelia, and more into their extensive discography. Boris is also known for their unique collaborations with mutually adventurous artists, including American Doom mongers Sunn O))), noise legends Merzbow, Keiji Haino, and Ian Astbury of The Cult.

Wata, always seen and heard on stage wielding her black Les Paul Custom, mixes killer riffs with searing, fluid, or jaggedly melodic leads and controlled walls of feedback, often with help from an EBow. It's a connection of chaos and melody that has enchanted Boris fans worldwide and influenced many bands that have followed in their considerable wake. Simply stated, no other band sounds like Boris, and no other guitarist rocks like Wata.

But with EQD's Hizumitas fuzz on your pedalboard, you can carve out your own singular, mega-heavy tone.

Hizumitas is a faithful recreation of Wata's go-to distortion pedal, the Elk BM Sustainar. The Elk is a Japanese variant of the very well-known "Triangle" BMP. The designers at EQD tried several vintage BMP's during development, found that each pedal was wildly different and realized that to truly capture the magic they needed the original. Wata graciously sent her beloved pedal halfway around the world, and EQD discovered that it had something special the others didn't have: heavy saturation with a gritty edge and massive bottom while maintaining a clear and dynamic tone with enough mids and top end to cut through any sludge. The studious wizards at EQD have built all of those characteristics into the Hizumitas.