DEATH BY AUDIO
apocalypse
BY LYLE ZAEHRINGER
For all the ominousness that the year 2012 portends for some, it’s a wonderland out there for stompbox nuts—a
veritable land o’ plenty, especially if you dig
fuzz. One of the most beautiful things about
the new fuzz explosion is that the more
enterprising and visionary fuzz builders
are moving way beyond the tried-and-true
templates. Death by Audio has been doing
creative work on this front since the turn of
the century, and the irreverent tribe of pedal
tweakers from Brooklyn, New York, now
maintains a line of pedals from the simple
but effective Interstellar Overdriver to the
Robot 8-bit synthesizer pedal. The latest,
the Apocalypse, is perfect for 2012—both
because of its end-times-approved name,
and its forward-looking and freethinking
approach to fuzz. And with its intuitive,
5-mode control set, it puts copious amounts
of sonic brutality at your fingertips.
to hear audio clips of the pedal at
premierguitar.com/apr2012
CLICKHere…
and gainiac—are less cryptically named
than they might first appear. As its name
suggests, scoup mode has a mid-scooped,
metal-friendly EQ curve. It’s a great means
of nailing headbanging tones from the ’80s
onward, but it also gives you the spongier
response of a fuzz circuit. Stoner- and
doom-metal guitarists are bound to love
this setting. Rolling SFE back toward the
bass side produces a massive, subwoofer-
punishing growl, with just a hint of high-
end sizzle. Rolling back drive gets you a bit
more dynamic response on top of the bone-
crushing tones. The relatively low output of
scoup mode reveals that there’s some serious
noise gating at work, but it’s masterfully
implemented and doesn’t adversely affect
the musicality of the signal decay. It can
also effectively massage the noisier output
of single-coils, even with the unit’s volume
and drive knobs dimed.
5-position
fuzz selector
Sweepable
EQ control
Controlled Mayhem
The Apocalypse’s aesthetics reflect a clear
love of late-’60s and early-’70s synth and
consumer-electronics designs without looking
slavishly retro or frivolous. The knobs are the
same type you’d see on an old Minimoog,
and the unit is even labeled with cool wave-form-shape graphics that would be at home
on an old analog synth. The cool blue-green
powder finish and black-and-white sparkle
paint graphics are sharp, bold, and clear.
The control layout itself is simple. But
this relatively easy-to-navigate control
set can lead you down a myriad of tone-tweaking paths. Volume and drive knobs
perform obvious functions. But the larger
sweepable frequency equalizer (SFE) knob,
which determines whether the unit emphasizes bass or treble frequencies, is the ticket
to opening up the pedal’s potential. The
unit can be powered via a 9V battery or an
optional AC power supply.
Five Means to Furious Fuzz
The Apocalypse’s five modes—scoup,
square wave, wave form shifter, octavious,
