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My first real exposure to the original Kay Fuzz came via Daniel Lanois’ soundtrack to the film Sling Blade. I was used to Lanois being resourceful, unbridled, and emotional in his playing. But there was something in the harrowing track “Orange Kay” that added menace to Lanois’ already emotive attack. The monster in the mix, so to speak, was the fuzz pedal that gave the track its name. And though I’ve tried to use octave-up pedals to approximate the textures Lanois conjured in “Orange Kay,” nothing quite delivered the frantic, time-ripping-at-its-seams, desperation that Lanois’ Kay Fuzz and it’s treadle-activated filtering evoked.
Black Cat Pedals’ Tom Hughes was one of the first to nail the Kay Fuzz sound and functionality when he built a clone into a standard wah enclosure. But the first-generation Monster K-Fuzz (as he called it) was very limited and expensive. Now the Monster K-Fuzz has returned. And while you’ll need to use or invest in an expression pedal to get true Kay Fuzz-style performance, the latest version also comes with new clipping, voicing, and gain features that broaden its usability and enable the pedal to work with a wide range of guitars, amps, and other stomps. This could be the most versatile Kay Fuzz-inspired pedal ever.
While there are many similarities in the basic circuitry of Monster K and octave-up fuzz pedals like the Shin-Ei Super Fuzz and Foxx Tone Machine, there are pronounced differences in tone and dynamics. One of the primary differences is that the Monster K is much smoother, less clipped, and less likely to glitch out in the high-mid range at most settings. That makes the Monster K well suited for the tone-shifting, volume swell-like effects you can extract with an expression pedal. The shift or curve of the fuzz frequency can feel relatively steep and abrupt when using an expression pedal. (I used a Moog EP-3.) But it’s not binary, on/off attenuation either, and if the contour isn’t exactly an elegant arc, the output still shifts smoothly. (This fast, steep filtering curve is probably most famously used on the Edge’s intro to U2’s “Elevation”).
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