The new Ripped Speaker Fuzz by EHX is inspired by one of the best sounding mistakes in audio history.
The Ripped Speaker Fuzz pedal — as the name suggests — looks back at a time through the ’60s and ’70s where intentional and unintentional damage to amps, pushing the boundary on audio equipment, and innovative artists bred some of the most exciting music of the day.
This particular model pays homage to a mythical moment in speaker desecration: when The Kinks took a razor blade to the speaker of an amplifier and altered the course of rock ‘n’ roll history.
No-brainer controls on the Ripped Speaker include Volume, Rip, Tone, and Fuzz. The Fuzz knob is where all the magic happens: at low settings it delves into the lo-fi vibes of yesteryear, letting you tap into that perforated speaker sound, or maybe the sound of a valve being dislodged. Turn the fuzz control up and you can get some searing, fully saturated fuzz tones.
The Rip function is a bias control, adjusting the clipping of the top and bottom of the waveform. 12 o’clock is the most balanced bias offering up a fat sound with great low and high-end bite. This control lets you swing between full harmonic expressiveness or the sputtering gate sound for shrunken, choked, or dying battery sounds.
The tone knob is a tilt-shift style EQ, noon being flat, clockwise giving the brighter tones with rolled back lows, while counter-clockwise will yield darker more pronounced lows.
Featuring a true-bypass, pedalboard-friendly size, and ability to use a 9-volt power supply so the good times will never stop with an actual dead battery.
Retail price is $99 USD, roughly $130 AUD however Australian prices have not been released.
To see it in action check out the vid below, more info at Electro Harmonix.
