Electro-Harmonix goes old school with the Ripped Speaker fuzz pedal

The notion that things were better in the old days rings especially loud in guitar circles – but what about distortion pedals? After all, the trailblazers such as Link Wray (opens in new tab)and The Kinks' Dave Davies (opens in new tab) literally ripped their speaker cones to get the sound. And that's the inspiration for Electro-Harmonix's new distortion / fuzz pedal (opens in new tab)… yep you guessed it, the Ripped Speaker.

Electro-Harmonix

(Image credit: Electro-Harmonix)

It even has its own Rip knob – a bias control that sets the amount of clipping to the top and bottom of your signal's wave form. Set at noon, the fuzz is fat with just enough bite. Turn it clockwise and E-HX says it produces a "hard grating effect" – things get spluttery. Turn the Rip control the other way and its a smoother affair with the signal fading out quickly.

Electro-Harmonix

(Image credit: Electro-Harmonix)

The pedal's active Tone control delivers a tilt-shift EQ. Clockwise from noon, its gets brighter and counter-clockwise is get darker with more low end. 

Sounds like fun – with plenty of modern applications for an old school inspiration. 

The Ripped Speaker is priced at $99. More info at Electro-Harmonix (opens in new tab)

Rob Laing
Guitars Editor, MusicRadar

I'm the Guitars Editor for MusicRadar, handling news, reviews, features, tuition, advice for the strings side of the site and everything in between. Before MusicRadar I worked on guitar magazines for 15 years, including Editor of Total Guitar. I've currently set aside any pipe dreams of getting anywhere with my own songs and I am enjoying playing covers in function bands.