Squirrel Audio are doing Squirrel based designed artwork on the pedals, there’s a Squirrel with one eye called Cyclops that is a signal booster, an evil evil evil looking Squirrel whose sole purpose is to make a horrible silicon based fuzz racket (thus we have here) and a number of others that include a Silicon/Germanium Fuzz (a switch enables switching between the two transistors) and a Tube Overdrive (evil bakelite squirrels).
Anyway, back to the Fuzzy Squirrel. It’s a silicon transistor pedal so 1960s fuzz face vintage fans can fuck right off. This baby has two controls, volume (left) tone (right).
I tested the pedal with a small 15 watt amp and Hofner Shortey with Humbucker pickups.
The (super)gain/volume puts to shame the Spinal Tap theory of volume 11, I turned the damn pedal on 10am setting (6am is the lowest) and my amp louder than any high gain pedal I’ve got in my array. I was also pleasantly surprised to find harmonics jumped straight out of the amp.
The tone/fuzz control is like the tone control on a guitar (very bass to very treble). With the guitar is sounded great between 9 and 11 oclock on the dial. Below 9 it started to get sludgy, great for Melvins dirge sound, and above 2pm it started to get into Jesus and the Mary Chain territory. Finally between 5 and 6 it was burning white noise, you can get that sound My Bloody Valentine use on the piercing horrible track they do at the end of their sets. Lovely noise!
Now dear reader you’re thinking, what?
Any pedal that can get from reasonable volume to very bloody loud, and do sludge dirge to melodic to white noise to feedback is a versatile little box. m
Now what are the problems with the pedal you think?
Unfortunately there are a few downfalls as with every thing, although they are small.
You can turn the pedal on/off without any cables being plugged in; however since it is true bypass no battery drain would be expected in normal circumstances, the enclosed is MXR type (screwdriver needed for the battery compartment) but the control are slightly closer to the switch than normal (people with massive feet?
Having said this I’m a size 10 in shoes and could operate it fine during band practice) and finally the tone and volume are not labeled, however as I’ve said its obvious what each control does by the sound.
Myself and Doug briefly spoke over the power of email, yes kids people still use email to speak and not twitfacespazz or whatever the latest craze is, and he’s a very nice and helpful chap. Even offers money back guarantee if you don’t think it sounds like you thought it would.
He also mentioned he’s currently attempting to build good digital pedals (rather than rubbish mass produced Chinese rubbish (sorry guys I know you’ll have your day very soon), which does the job but hohum, combined with quality analog controls.
Very exciting stuff considering the majority of boutique pedals out there are analog fueled by Z Vex or clones of older devices that can’t be accurately be reproduced due to the fact people don’t make the parts anymore.
Website : http://www.squirrelaudio.co.uk/
Ebay account : http://myworld.ebay.co.uk/britishstuff/
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