Zachary Vex is the founder of ZVEX Effects, a boutique effects pedal company. ZVEX pedals are unique both in look, with truly off the wall hand painted artistry, and function, with multitudes of controls taking guitar signals to places never before imagined. The Mastotron is a new pedal in the company’s Vextron series based on a heavy silicon fuzz design.

FRESH OUTTA THE BOX

Understated in appearance (especially for ZVEX), the dark blue pedal is slightly smaller than what one would consider standard. Also different is the layout which stretches wide, rather than tall. Controls include volume, tone, pulse width, fuzz, relax/push, and subs. A small red LED on the upper-right indicates ON and OFF. The all metal construction is solid and the electronics and 9V battery are sealed tight by four screws underneath.

DON’T FIX THAT TORN SPEAKER!

When I think fuzz, I think retro so I opted for my trusty Ibanez Jet King 1 (ok, so it’s from this decade but it’s retro in style) to take me through the journey of scratch and static. I was hanging out with my good friend Johnny DeMarco who was eager to test drive the pedal so I turned over performance responsibilities to him while I dialed in the settings. We plugged straight through the pedal into a Blackheart Little Giant Half Stack.

Phase One Technologies Fuzzymoto: Fuzz Guitar Effects Pedal

Phase One Technologies, founded in 2008 by Bill Carrigan and Mason el Hajj, is a custom shop for musicians striving to get the best sound out of their pedals and amps. They use analog solid-state and vacuum tube components exclusively and offer an existing product line as well as consultations with clients to provide custom solutions. The Fuzzymoto is a limited supply pedal inspired in sound by Mason’s love of Jimi Hendrix and in appearance by…well, you’ll have to ask the guys about that yourself.

IS THAT…AN EFFECT PEDAL?

What has two eyes, two ears, red and black fur, and a nose you’re supposed to stomp on? Why, it’s the Fuzzymoto, of course! This might be the coolest or the cutest pedal I’ve ever seen, I can’t decide. Supported by rubber feet, “Fuzzy” takes up a fair amount of real estate at 4-1/2 inches tall, 7 inches long, and 4 inches wide. Two chicken head-style dials form the eyes…I mean, allow control of volume and amount of fuzz. A heavy duty footswitch sits at the base, creating the visual of a long snout. And the whole thing is covered in red and black fur! How cool is that? Or cute? I still can’t decide. The underside is hand-etched with the name of the company, their location (Costa Mesa, CA), “The Original Fuzzymoto” and serial number a la artwork (I got “#24 of 40″). Even if you never use it to fuzz out your sound, this would just be fun to have on stage. Or to take along with you, like you do with your pet rock family. But that’s not the point.

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T-Rex Engineering was founded in 1996 by self proclaimed tech geeks and music freaks, Lars Dahl and Sebastian Jensen. The Danish company initially set out to develop high end MIDI gear for guitar but grew quickly and expanded to manufacture power supplies, pedal boards, and a slew of quality effects. With their ToneBug series, T-Rex strives to maintain the same degree of quality they’ve been known for but at a more affordable price.

The T-Rex Tonebug Reverb Guitar Effects Pedal!

Fresh Outta The Box

The chunky pale yellow pedal is truly vintage in style. It’s simplistic, yet elegant with its rounded corners, gently sloping face, and chrome controls. If I didn’t know any better I’d swear it found use as some sort of appliance in my grandmother’s kitchen back when milk bottles were still hand delivered to her doorstep. The casing is all metal and the base is heavy duty plastic with a little bit of a rubbery feel. The pedal is hefty and I’d bet money it would survive a fall of several stories. Two shiny chrome knobs and a toggle switch on top serve as the controls and sit atop a brushed aluminum base labeled with the controls’ functions. The knobs are thick and turn smoothly with the perfect amount of drag to dial them into place where they’ll stay put. The switch toggles confidently. A wide rectangular ON light rests atop the pedal face just above the switch. The footswitch is equally heavy duty with good action on the spring inside and it’s well clear of the controls so there’s little risk of mistakenly kicking your settings. Metal input and output jacks on either side of a 9V power adapter plug are reinforced with hard plastic washers. The battery compartment is accessible underneath the pedal via a door that swings open. This makes battery changes so much easier than having to sit down with a tool and deal with annoying little screws. Additionally, the battery door is hinged to the pedal which greatly minimizes the chance of losing it.

The day before sitting down to review this pedal I scored an Ibanez Jet King in mint condition off craigslist for a killer deal. My good friend Johnny DeMarco, a phenomenal guitarist, wanted to take the guitar and pedal for a test drive so I happily traded back and forth with him for the audio samples. The Jet King sports a pair of coil-tapped humbuckers and I found happiness in a blend of the bridge and neck pickup with the bridge in full humbucker mode and the neck coil-tapped. I ran my guitar through the pedal and into a Blackheart Little Giant Half Stack. No other effects were used.

HELLO…ELLO…LLO…LO…O…!

The knobs are labeled ‘Decay’ and ‘Depth’. The switch toggles between ‘Spring’ and ‘Modern’. The best way to think about this is ‘Decay’ defines the size of the space you’re in. Dialed all the way down is similar to playing in a short space while all the way up sounds like a very long and deep space. ‘Depth’ places you along this space. At a setting of zero it’s as if you’re playing in front of the entrance – most of the sound is dry guitar with subtle reverb echoing back. Diming this setting places you waaaay back in the back resulting in mostly reverb with very little dry guitar. The toggle transports you between two very different environments: a hallway for ‘Spring’ and a cave or very large chamber for ‘Modern’.

The first audio example starts with a clean unaffected signal for reference and then clicks over in ‘Spring’ mode with decay set halfway and depth set at 3 on a scale of 10. This setting sounds like playing just inside the doorway of a medium length hallway.

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I handed Johnny the Jet King and turned the decay all the way up. This increases the apparent size of the hallway and dialing the depth a bit higher put him further back in the space.

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Dialing depth all the way for maximum effect gives the impression of playing from all the way at the back of the hallway where the reverb overtakes the dry guitar signal.

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We traded jobs as I slung the axe over my shoulder and Johnny clicked me over to ‘Modern’ mode. This completely transforms the space from a hallway to a large chamber or cave. With decay set halfway and depth just shy of that, lush and sweet reverb surrounds every strum.

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We traded again as I let Johnny finish up the last two samples. Maxing out the decay (increasing the size of the space) might make one feel smaller in size but the sound is huge.

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Finally, adding depth to match the decay at its full-up setting results in massive reverberations. Clarity is overwhelmed by the echoes as melodies become more of an all-encompassing soundscape.

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This pedal is incredibly authentic-sounding and I actually feel like I’m in the environments I set with the controls. The ‘Spring’ setting is enough to provide a basic natural sounding reverb but the ‘Modern’ setting opens up a wider range of possibilities and adds real value. Additionally, setting depth to zero (in either setting) results in no reverb but serves as a tone enhancer, giving the sound just a touch of sparkle and roundness. I don’t know that T-Rex had this in mind when they built the pedal so consider it a bonus.

The Final Wrap

I love this pedal. T-Rex has constructed a rugged little brick of quality components and authentic-sounding reverb. I find the price a bit on the high side, however there’s nothing to complain about. Save up for an extra week and go get one.

PROS: Rugged construction. Quality components. Versatile for a reverb and authentic-sounding. Very cool vintage look.

CONS: Doesn’t automatically turn you into Brian Setzer. You have to practice for that. Otherwise, none.

MSRP – $199

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Dan Coplan is senior staff writer at SMG. Dan is a Los Angeles based cinematographer and self-admitting guitar junkie. Email: dancoplan@sharemyguitar.com

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The Little Giant Half Stack guitar amp from Blackheart consists of the BH5H amp head and BH112 speaker cabinet. The name implies monster sound contained within a small half stack style package.

FEATURES: The front of the amp head features an ON/OFF switch, 3W/5W selector switch, bass, mid, and treble controls, and input jack. This hardware is heavy duty – there is nothing that feels cheap and it inspires confidence in the overall quality. My only minor complaint is the input jack. I like to feel a nice positive ‘ka-chunk’ to make me feel like I’ve got a solid lock into my gear. With this input jack the cable slides in a little too easily and I feel like the slightest tug will pull it right out. But hey, call it a safety feature. The back features 4, 8, and 16 ohm speaker outputs. Driving this Class A amp is a 12AX7 preamp tube and EL84 power tube. The closed back cabinet houses a 12” Eminence speaker and has two 16 ohm parallel speaker jacks on the back.

Construction: The materials are rugged and feel like they can take a real beating. It’s also damn good looking. The head and cabinet feature black-and-white checkerboard style fabric outlined with thick white binding that is implemented as actual material rather than a low cost paint job. Black tolex covers both pieces. The cabinet seems to have a smoother covering on it whereas the head has a stickier almost rubber-type feel. I wouldn’t call this a significant feature, but I actually appreciate this texture as it puts a little grab on my guitar when I lean it against the amp head.

The Blackheart logo adorns the front of both the head and cabinet. This is totally subjective but while I do think the logo is pretty cool, there’s something about it that takes away from the perception of the amp as a serious ass-kicking piece of gear, almost like it’s trying to be cool for cool’s sake. But like the attention to detail in construction, the parts providing the base for the logos are cut in three levels which is added attention to detail. Both pieces have heavy duty carrying handles on top.

SOUND: This amp is like three amps in one. At 3W with the volume set midway or below, it’s very clean. Beyond midway to full volume the amp begins to break up naturally providing tasty crunch. Switching over to 5W and dialing the volume back to midway maintains similar crunch but with more ‘oomph’. Finally, going whole hog with the volume cranked at 5W pushes crunch into distortion.

The 3-band EQ is very effective in dialing in a variety of tones. Given the size of this amp and the fact that it’s powered by one preamp and one power tube, I’m impressed by how warm it sounds. I found myself experimenting primarily with the bass EQ to dial in the amount of warmth and roundness. The amp sounded great until I thrashed around at full volume in the 5W setting. That’s when lower frequencies started to warble and growl. But by turning the bass EQ down and adjusting my pickup selection I was able to tame the beast.

Volume-wise you can get enough good character out of this Little Giant at lower volumes for practicing at home without terrorizing your neighbors (unless you want to) and it’s also loud enough that you can get your jam on and rehearse with it with a band so long as you’re not trying to compete with full-sized gear at full volume. The key is in understanding at what levels the amp breaks up into various degrees of distortion. If you want to distort at neighbor-friendly levels, you’ll likely have to turn to pedals for this.

THE ROUND-UP: This is a great sounding amp in an attractive conveniently sized package. I’m impressed by its versatility in consideration of its basic features. My wish list would include a gain control to get a handle on the overdrive, a standby switch if only to make it feel more “legitimate”, and a headphone jack because I want to crank this sucker in my apartment at odd hours. For right around $300 this is a great buy!

THE UPS: High quality construction. Attractive, Great organic sounds from clean to crunch and beyond. Great value.

THE DOWNS: Full volume at 5W gets growly. No gain control.

THE ALL AROUNDS: A very cool package that won’t bust your budget or your ear drums while still allowing you to rock like a star. A fun amp all around that inspires playing.