Today’s guest review comes to us from Liam Stevens – you can find him on Instagram, and with his band Tainted on Facebook. Thanks again, Liam!
Had Tony Pepers, of Pepers’ Pedals fame, knock me together this custom pedal a few years back. At its core, it’s a clone of a Big Muff, but he’s done a few neat little tricks to it to make it more versatile. On the front of it there is a switch that shifts the mid range. You can go from the classic notched out mids of the muff to a flat mids through to a pushed mids sound. Inside he included a switch that bypasses some of the internals and helps retain the bottom end for use on bass. This last feature is important to me as I am one of those Bi Polar musicians who can’t decide from day to day if he is a bassist or a guitarist. Being able to crack open the Hefe and switch the bias is really helpful. To top it off it has a creamy dreamer mod added to it as well.
So how does it sound? Like the unrelenting bowels of hell. So basically much like the Big Muff that inspired it really. If all you want is to do is get that core Big Muff sound it’ll do it. But for me, being able to shift those mids really brings this pedal to life. I found I could get it to go from a classic fuzz sound to more of a roaring growl by pushing the mids to the front. On bass especially you really hear this, it sits much more forward in the mix when playing with a band and really causes never ending smiles as the stage rumbles behind you. On more than a few occasions I have had people come up to me after shows asking to see what pedals I use and they’re always surprised when its some small unassuming box from some bloke they haven’t heard of.
But why would I come here and torment you with a review of a one of a kind pedal made to order? Well, the bro Tony has been a busy beaver of late and is really pushing Pepers pedals onto the world stage. He produces a very similar pedal to this, The Russian Doom machine, that is much the same with some extra tweaks here and there and an awesome graphic on the front. If you need fuzz, and you need it to be built like a soviet tank and as savage as an AK 47 round to the chest look no further.I’m seeing more and more of these turning up on stages around the place, all of them sounding furious and doomladen. And each time I do, I get a little bit warm knowing that my little custom pedal shares the same DNA, its like that cool uncle that still goes to the kids sports events to see the little tykes run the ball just as hard and fast as he used to. They’re good pedals, get one.
Finally, I can speak from experience that Tony is a great guy to work with and will bend over backwards when it comes to customer service. You really can’t go wrong.
GET EXCLUSIVE UPDATES, CONTEST INFO, SEE OUR LATEST DEMO VIDEOS AND MORE:
