Wren And Cuff has developed a signature overdrive-and-fuzz pedal for Coheed And Cambria frontman and guitarist Claudio Sanchez. The Anna combines circuits inspired by his favourite drive and fuzz combinations, effectively housing two pedals in one housing.
Said enclosure is finished with the dragonfly artwork from the Nyack, New York contemporary prog stalwarts’ sophomore album, The Second Stage Turbine Blade, and it houses a comprehensive array of controls for what should be an extremely versatile guitar effects pedal.
Describing it as a “Swiss Army Knife of fuzz and drive”, Wren And Cuff puts a lot of options on the table. There are two footswitches, servicing two sides of a pedal that feeds the signal from an ‘80s Boss SD-1 Super Overdrive circuit into a late-‘70s op-amp Big Muff, with the drive side of the pedal offering switchable clipping options via four-way rotary switch.
There is, of course, a classic SD-1 clipping option, but this is joined by an LED mode for hard-edge symmetrical clipping, a no clipping diodes mode so you can use that side as an open-sounding clean boost pedal, and finally a TS setting, which, as the name suggests, gives you a mid-humped tube amp style drive sound that you would normally associate with a little green stompbox.
This selectable clipping is joined by dials for Volume, Drive and Tone, and a switch that toggles between a regular SD-1 and high-gain voicings.
On the op-amp Big Muff side, you have dials for Fuzz, Tone and Volume, and a toggle switch for activating the popular ‘Tone Bypass’ mod that many players have had on their ’78 Big Muffs to reclaim some body in the midrange.
The dual-footswitch design allows you to run either effect on its own, or to run the drive into the fuzz.
Wren And Cuff has made signature fuzz pedals for the likes of J Mascis, offering the Dinosaur Jr guitarist’s Garbage Face in regular and compact “Junior” sizes. And it is accepting pre-orders for the Anna now, with pedals priced $349, shipping in six to eight weeks.
See Wren And Cuff for more details.
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