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DIMARZIO 36TH ANNIVERSARY PAF AND TRUE VELVET PICKUPS 152 B.C. RICH CHUCK SCHULDINER TRIBUTE STEALTH 154 MONO M80 GUITAR CASE 154
BIG LOVE
Way Huge Pork Loin, Fat Sandwich and
Swollen Pickle MKII guitar effect pedals
BY CHRIS GILL
I
T WAS A SOMBER DAY for stomp
box aficionados when Way Huge
Electronics closed shop in 1999.
Although Way Huge founder Jeorge
Tripps went on to bigger and better
digital endeavors with Line 6, pedal
enthusiasts missed his high-quality
analog products with quirky names
like the Camel Toe Triple Overdrive,
Aqua Puss Analog Delay and Piercing Moose Octifuzz (don’t let Sarah
Palin get her hands on one of those!).
Shortly after the company’s closure,
Way Huge pedals began selling for
way huge prices on eBay, with some of
Tripps’ rarest products trading hands
Turn the scoop trim pot counterclockwise for classic,
scooped mid Pickle tones or clockwise to flatten the
midrange.
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GU I TA R WOR L D
for thousands of dollars.
Rumors about a Way Huge resurrection began to circulate when it was
discovered that Tripps had started
working for Jim Dunlop, where he
played an instrumental role in developing the company’s Authentic Jimi
Hendrix Signature Series pedals.
Finally, in early 2008, came word
of three new pedals designed by
Tripps and bearing the Way Huge
name. They include two entirely new
designs—the Fat Sandwich Harmonic
Saturator and the Pork Loin Soft Clip
Injection—and the Swollen Pickle
MKII Jumbo Fuzz, an expanded and
revised version of an old Way Huge
favorite. Each pedal provides its own
tasty variation of distortion or overdrive, offering players a variety of
tonal flavors to savor.
EXTERNAL
AND
INTERNAL
TRIM POTS
LET YOU
CUSTOMIZE
THE TONE TO
CREATE YOUR
OWN SONIC
SIGNATURE.
The tone control is a low-pass filter that rolls off high
end as you turn it counterclockwise.
FEATURES
ALL THREE PEDALS share similar fea-
tures, such as a heavy-duty footswitch
with quiet relay-based true bypass, a
blue LED, an easy-access front-loading battery compartment and a colorful anodized aluminum chassis. Each
pedal operates with either a nine-volt
battery or an optional power adapter.
The Pork Loin combines “British”style preamp overdrive with a clean
boost function to make your guitar’s
tone raunchier without sacrificing
dynamics. There are controls for
The distortion control provides a full smorgasbord of
delectable overdrive and distortion textures.
DCHECK
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MARTIN SWOMGT ACOUSTIC GUITAR 156 IK MULTIMEDIA STOMP IO-1 158 ELECTRO-HARMONIX BASS MICROSYNTH & BASS BLOGGER PEDALS 160
The pedals feature
colorful anodized
aluminum cases and
easy-access battery
compartments.
WAY HUGE PORK LOIN,
FAT SANDWICH AND
SWOLLEN PICKLE MKII
LIST PRICES: Pork Loin,
$169.99; Fat Sandwich,
$179.99; Swollen Pickle
MKII, $159.99
MANUFACTURER:
Way Huge Electronics,
wayhuge.com
INPUTS/OUTPUTS:
Mono (all pedals)
POWER: Single ninevolt battery or via
optional AC adapter
CIRCUIT: Quiet relaybased true bypass
Each pedal features internal trimpots,
as well as external trimpots.
volume, tone and overdrive plus
two externally mounted trim pots
for adjusting the blend of clean
and overdrive tones and fine tuning the overdrive’s EQ frequencies.
Three more adjustable trim pots are
mounted inside the pedal, allowing
you to tweak the filter spectrum, the
intensity of the overdrive effect and
presence settings.
Designed for use with an amp
dialed in to a clean setting, the Fat
Sandwich features a multistage clipping circuit that produces harmonically rich distortion and overdrive and
significantly thickens the midrange
without sacrificing clarity. Controls
include Volume, Tone and Distortion
knobs, Presence and Resonance external trim pots and Curve, Highs and
Drive internal trim pots.
The Swollen Pickle high-gain fuzz
pedal is probably the easiest gear purchase any guitarist could convince his
wife or girlfriend to agree to—what
woman could possibly say no when
you tell her you’re bringing home
your Way Huge Swollen Pickle? The
Swollen Pickle MKII is a significantly
enhanced version with external trim
pots for Scoop and Crunch and internal
trim pots for clip and voice in addition
to the same loudness, filter and sustain
controls found on the original version.
Conveniently, Way Huge has affixed a sticker with the original trim
pot settings inside each of the three
pedals in case you want to restore the
original factory tones.
PERFORMANCE
WAY HUGE pedals may have some of
the silliest names in the business, but
they’re not novelties. These are real
meat-and-potatoes effects that working guitarists can build their signature
sound around, rather than use them
for occasional textural variety.
The Pork Loin is just the ticket for
making your solos meaty and muscular. The tone control is actually a
low-pass filter that rolls off highs as
it’s rotated counterclockwise, making
the overall tone darker. The overdrive
and clean controls let you adjust the
PORK LOIN
CONTROLS: Volume,
tone and overdrive
knobs, clean and curve
external trim pots, filter,
presence and drive mix
internal trim pots
FAT SANDWICH
CONTROLS: Volume,
tone and distortion
knobs, presence and
resonance external trim
pots, curve, highs and
drive internal trim pots
SWOLLEN PICKLE MKII
CONTROLS: Loudness,
filter and sustain knobs,
scoop and crunch external trim pots, clip and
voice internal trim pots
ON
DISC
balance between the growl and sustain of soft-clipped overdrive and the
punchy dynamics produced by the
clean preamp circuit. The Pork Loin
is a great choice if you love the tone of
your guitar and amp and want a little
more guts and power.
If you wish your guitar had the
warmth, sustain and punch of an
ES-335, you’ll love the Fat Sandwich.
This pedal instantly transforms even
the wimpiest single-coil weakling
into a raging, robust tone machine
with midrange that’s as thick and
muscular as Brazilian booty. The
distortion control dials in a wide
variety of chunky overdrive textures
that you can boost to hefty distortion
by cranking the internal drive trim
pot all the way up.
Fans of the original Swollen Pickle
will welcome the sizzling scooped mid
tones of the new MKII version like an
old friend, but the ability to customize
the tones via the inner and external trim
pots makes this a must-have pedal, especially when you crank up the crunch
control for seemingly endless sustain.
The Swollen Pickle’s filter control dramatically shapes the tone from razorsharp sizzle to swamp-bottom filth.
THE BOTTOM LINE
YES, LADIES AND GENTS, Way Huge is
back, and it’s bigger and better than
ever. The Pork Loin, Fat Sandwich
and Swollen Pickle MKII pedals
remain true to the spirit of Jeorge
Tripps’ original Clinton-era designs
while they add great new features
and sell for affordable prices that
recession-weary working musicians
can appreciate. ✺
PRO
CON
STELLAR TONE, EXTERNAL
AND INTERNAL TRIM POTS
PROVIDE CUSTOM PERSONALITY, AFFORDABLE
WHERE’S THE
SCREAMING BEAVER?
GU I TA R WOR L D
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