effector 13 truly beautiful disaster

This issue, we have two Aging Youths reveal what makes Effector 13's Truly Beautiful Disaster behave like a tempting and sultry woman, beautiful but deadly...


by Leslie Low

I've never been a gadgets freak for the longest time, liking my guitar clean with the occasional delay or wah. But lately that has changed. Mr Misse came along and introduced this disaster thingey: one part fuzz, one part infinity loop.

Such a peculiar pedal! The knobs work in the opposite direction. But that's not a deterrent at all because what you get in this little box is something quite special. I'm not entirely familiar with fuzz tones, in fact I've never been a fan of fuzz tones but this one sounds different. It is fat and warm with a little sub-harmonic thing going on in there.

There's also a blend knob that allows you to mix in your clean guitar sound. Great for dirtying up that clean guitar sound. Besides the fuzz section, the genius lies in the infinity loop section. I've been mostly playing with this section lately. What it does is that it allows you to connect whatever pedals you have e.g. delay, chorus, phaser etc. and be able to create weird sounds with it.

I have a delay connected to it right now and have been able to create some pretty nice swelling chords by controlling it with its photo-sensitive eye. The 'eye' is a light sensitive device that can alter the intensity of the effect connected to the infinity loop. So if you have a delay connected to it, by waving your hand or foot over the eye would be like increasing or decreasing the feedback knob of your delay pedal. Pretty soon it got me hooking up all the pedals I have through the loop just to hear what crazy sounds came out of it.

It is a pedal that requires time to figure out. It will sit well and probably beef up your existing arsenal of pedals. Suffice to say it was a good buy for me. And I am still discovering its strengths as I go along, its limits still not within sight.



by 44ofjuly

When I first saw the Truly Beautiful Disaster fuzz pedal over the Internet 2 years back, the look was what attracted me to it. Even till today I still find most of Effector13 pedals looking really funky and different from most pedals out there. Just in case if anyone thinks , "Hur?? What about the look, its just a pedal after all." Oh well, it does matter to me. Since some people are crazy over the flametop, birdseye maple neck or those pretty looking wood on a guitar, why not nice looking pedals on the pedalboard? Of course, its gotta sound good too.

Anyway, just like the name, Truly Beautiful Disaster fuzz, it's a fuzz cum feedback loop pedal in one. It's REALLY capable of some sonic disaster when used in the right/wrong way.

On the pedal itself, the various knobs and switches include knobs

1) volume - self explanatory
2) fuzz - amount of it, from slight to massive and goes mad with the oscillation going on
3) octave - fatten up the fuzz, but making it sound rather un-fuzzy. It's more of a "motorbike engine running" sound to me. Most of the time, I just turned the octave to minimum
4) blend - mixing of the fuzz and the octave. With the octave knob at minimum, turning the blend knob is like adjusting the tone/mid response on the fuzz.
5) feedback - to control the amount of feedback/oscillation sound when the feedback loop side of the pedal is engaged.

One thing weird or irritating about the knobs on Effector13 pedals, it's the reverse of most pedals out there. By turning it clockwise, the setting is to minimum and counterclockwise, it will go maximum. So be careful, it might cause some shock when the pedal is on and the volume knob is at fully counter clockwise, thinking that it's at a minimum level.

1) gate - a limiting gate. You can change the fuzz from mad irritating oscillation to a tame, behaving tone. With this engaged, you really have to dig in the strings to get the fuzz tones out. At some settings, it's capable of getting some "pulling Velcro apart" like sounds, which is similar to the zvex Fuzzfactory at certain settings. The gated fuzz sound, in my honest opinion?is a either love-it-or-really-hate-it thing.

2) Eye - To activate the photo sensor on the pedal. When used with the feedback loop occupied, one can use a hand or a torchlight to shine at the sensor and hear the effect of it. Pretty fun in its own for some wild, experimental/wanky moment. Although the manual stated that it can be used like a theremin, I find that its rather weak for it.

3) Feedback - Activate the feedback loop. With this on, there's another stompswitch to put the feedback loop in action when needed.

The 2 stompswitches are for the engaging the fuzz and the feedback loop. And so, how's the performance of this pedal?

I just have to say that this pedal is really a rather unique/irritating/special/crazy/guitar sensitive pedal. I don't think I have played anything like this before (at least not for a fuzz pedal). It's really not a plug in and play type of pedal. It will need some time for the guitar player to sit down to tweak the knobs on the pedal, tweak the tone and volume knobs on the guitar in order to understand the pedal.

When the pedal is tamed (which I call it "stable fuzz settin"), the resulting fuzz tone is a fat and raw sounding one. Playing various guitars through this pedal will get you different results. It's a guitar sensitive pedal. Through certain guitars (Strat, Tele, etc), it sounds really sweet. For some, it's just oscillation and irritating to me. To get a stable fuzz from it, the interaction of the pedal knobs and the volume/tone knob on the guitar is important. When starting out on the pedal, I turn the fuzz to about ?, octave to minimum, blend to ? or more, its just oscillation going on and on. To tame it, I have to adjust the volume/tone knob on my guitar to get that certain "hot spot" before the oscillation stop and what's left is the fat sounding fuzz.

And if I'm in an "experimenting noise" mood, I just add a delay pedal after it and play around with the guitar tone knob and volume knob. There are really quite a number of whacked out sounds in there. I?find that to fully utilize the "stable fuzz" setting and the oscillation sound at the same time, it will be best to have a guitar with 2 separate volume and tone knob, do the adjustment. And with a flick of the pickup selector switch, it can go from the stable fuzz to mad oscillation.

As for whether does the fuzz tone cleans up when turning down the volume knob on the guitar, well forget it. This is not like a normal pedal. You will only get oscillation going madly...

As for the feedback loop side, there are quite a number of effect combinations that can be done, thus getting some really wild sounds going on. Over at the Effector13 website, there are quite a number of sound clips of various combinations available. So, I won't really go into that. Just want to say that you should keep the feedback knob and the volume/rate/ knobs of the various pedals in the feedback loop down before engaging the loop. There can be some really loud and sudden oscillations going on when the loop is in action.?To prevent getting a shocking pain to the ear, start slow and soft before proceeding further.

To conclude, I find that this pedal really lives up to its name. It's truly beautiful and can be a disaster too. For a fuzz pedal, it's not as straight forward and not a plug-in-and-play kind of pedal. But, if anyone want to have their own unique sound or are into noise making and adding texture to sound, this is a good pedal to use. In my honest opinion, this pedal is not for everyone. If anyone is interested in it, you should check out the sound clips over at the Effector13 website. If possible, you should have a test run with you own guitar, it really makes a difference. For me, I love this pedal for its look (haha, yeah the look!!) and its weirdness. At times, it sounds manageable and yet sometimes, it's just totally out of control.