There is a certain demographic of guitar players who need no more details other than the name of this brand new fuzz pedal from the beautiful mind of Way Huge’s stompbox guru Jeorge Tripps.
And that’s all they will need to know before visiting the online retail of their choice and adding to cart, or heading down to their local gear store to grab one from the pedal cabinet. On early evidence – the demo video, the spec – they will regret nothing.
The pedal in question is called the Doom Hammer Fuzz and we, too, are of a mind to buy sight unseen, plug it onto the pedalboard, and let this mother rip. So many of the fuzz boxes we covet today are based on yesteryear’s designs, and in a sense, so too is the Doom Hammer Fuzz.
Tripps first put the circuit together for one of these in 1998, when he was asked to modify an op-amp fuzz from the late ‘70s (1978, to be exact, which would surely be an Electro-Harmonix Big Muff Pi) for the San Francisco indie psych-rock band Oranger.
The tasting notes for said vintage op-amp Big Muffs often talk about the flat mids, a lot of gnarliness, and the kind of sonic profile that would famously attract Billy Corgan of the Smashing Pumpkins, who, circa Siamese Dream, made it a fundamental part of his electric guitar tone.
Tripps tightened up that old op-amp fuzz’s bottom end and tweaked it to make it perform better onstage, and he liked what he heard.
He kept the circuit on file, made a bunch of prototypes as you do, et voila, we have the Doom Hammer Fuzz all these years later, and a pedal that will do that Smashing Pumpkins über-fuzz grunge sound but also give you all kinds of warm musical crunch when you roll that Fuzz dial back.
As the name implies, we would be interested to hear how it sounds when tuned down to C and engaged in the business of performing oversized doom metal guitar riffs.
It’s part of the Way Huge Smalls series, so it’s considerably more compact than Oranger's O.G. op-amp fuzz from 1978. It is also way cheaper, retailing at £182/$169. A vintage op-amp Big Muff Pi would set you back well over 500 bucks. It will be interesting to see how it performs in a head-to-head with the EHX Op-Amp Big Muff, which has the added option of a tone bypass switch.
The drive is easy. Three knobs. Output, Tone, Fuzz. There is plenty of range on the Fuzz dial. There’s very little fuss. And it’s a pedal that Way Huge promises will “pound your ears with thick saturation worthy of high-desert riffage and dense walls of fuzz straight from a ’90s fever dream”.
The Doom Hammer Fuzz takes 9V DC from a pedalboard power supply, has a blue LED that lights up when engaged, is true bypass and is available now from all good retailers. See Jim Dunlop for more details.
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