It has somehow been almost three months since we lost Steve Albini. July 22 would have marked the influential engineering icon’s 62nd birthday.
In honor of his memory, the team at EarthQuaker Devices recently shared a clip from their 2019 trip to Albini’s Electrical Audio studio, in which Albini talks through “the worst pedals” he ever owned – all still preserved in his collection.
It’s fair to say that Albini had his own rigorous standards, but he was never a brand snob, or your typical tonal cork-sniffer. Indeed, if anyone could find a use for cheap or noisy pedals, it would be him.
However, there is a line between ‘unwieldy’ and ‘useless’ – and Albini offers some typically acerbic commentary for his rogues gallery of stompboxes.
Among the units singled out for criticism are a generous handful by notorious budget pedal brand Walco.
“This is the Acoustic Feedback Eliminator – it’s supposed to be a noise gate. It is not a noise gate,” assesses Albini [at around 22.40]. “It shuts off the sound with a violent clack whenever you stop playing… The speed at which it opens [back] up is never less than about half a second.”
The pink Walco Fuzz Tone Generator is, in turn, dubbed, “The worst fuzz tone ever.” “It makes your guitar a lot quieter,” observes Albini. “Why would you do that?”
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Then there’s the Treble Expander, which was intended to be mounted on your guitar strap, enabling you to make incremental adjustments from the comfort of, well... your guitar strap. “To get it just right,” says Albini.
If that seems innovative, you’ll also love the yellow mystery box from Walco – one with a male jack connector sticking directly out of the bottom.
“This one plugged into your amplifier,” says Albini. “And then you would have this control – on your amplifier – where you couldn't reach it when it wasn't working correctly.”
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Albini also reserves a special mention for the Walco Bass Treble Expander and a tremolo attempt called the Sound Go Round that he describes as “completely unusable”.
Outside of Walco’s venerable line-up, Albini spares some ire for his Guyatone Noise Defender, which he purchased in 1989 while on tour in Japan, alongside a knock-off Fuzz Tone.
“This Noise Defender is is meant to be a noise gate but it actually makes it noisier… When it's open it sounds like a guitar, but when it shuts off it hisses. I don't think that's intentional,” he adds.
“The cheapest fuzz tone in the shop was called the Jazz Fusion pedal. As a combination, I traveled the farthest and wasted the most, in terms of percentage of value, on those two pedals – of any purchase I’ve ever made.”
So there you have it: some Alibini wisdom to bear in mind the next time you’re cruising for Reverb bargains.
