Effector 13 Torn's Peaker

When it comes to ease of use the pedal has 2 knobs -- Volume and Texture. The Volume knob does not necessarily function as a Level knob as one might expect. What I mean is that while you'd anticipate an increase in loudness with a clockwise movement that is not always the case. It seems dependent on the position of the Texture knob as to how much of Sound and White Noise mix you get. When it comes to the Texture knob you'll find two distinct modes both Left of 12 O'Clock and Right of 12 O'Clock. To the left our sound is gritty and thin...old school blues. Move it to the right and the speaker breaks apart (figuratively). Deeper tones resolve themselves in warm fuzz.

Running a Fender Telesonic, Gibson ES-335 and Parker P-36 through the Pedal into a Fender Blues Junior and Fender VibroChamp (1966). I keep the volume up high on the amps with a touch of reverb. This pedal just sounds great!! Lots of fun to experiment with as I move through Hill-Country Blues Grit to Muddy Waters Fuzz.

Built in a traditional aluminum case. Sturdy knobs and footswitch. Sure...I'd gig without a backup.

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If you play the Blues and are looking for a pedal that gives you the unpredictable breakup of a dirty ol'e amp then grab the Torn's Peaker. I am speaking the truth when I tell you this thing even picks up radio signals. True story -- with the texture knob far right and volume knob at 9 O'Clock I get a local Religious station. First time I heard it I freaked because there was preaching coming out of my amp about the dangers of demons. Talk about motivation for playing the Blues! Crazy but true story.

Input, Output, Bypass, DC Adaptor, one LED, and Volume and Texture controls. Pretty simple to use then, but it's worth taking the time to figure out some of the great sounds available.
The volume control is obviously pretty easy, but even that is worth a little experimentation; with the volume really low, you can get a great thin lo-fi sound, as the volume gets higher, the sound gets bigger and fatter. There's a lot of boost on tap too, enough to really drive your amp and make yourself heard.
The Texture control alters the sound in an interesting way, with a wide range of sounds and tones available from the one control. This is also affected by your guitar or bass volume.

It's not hard to get a good sound, a crazy sound, or a crazy good sound, but it is woth spending the extra few seconds to dial in a tone that really works for the song you're playing.

So far I've used this pedal with a 2 SGs (one with DiMarzios, one with whatever Gibson saw fit to put in it) and a Tele, through a Sheldon TT-3 (3 w handmade valve amp with a 12" speaker) at home and whatever Marshall my guitarist uses with the band and Thunderbird and Precision basses through a 200w Orange bass stack (not at home, the neighbours would cry). I'll cover the sounds with bass and guitar seperately.

With lower output pickups in the Tele and one fo my SGs the Torn's Peaker had a suprising amount of definition for such a compressed fuzzed sound, especially with the guitar volumes backed off. It's a well named pedal, because it really does sound like a torn speaker- one of my old amps had a hole punched through the speaker by a previous owner, and sounded great (!) but this is so much better.
With the texture control turned up, the sound gets even fatter, and begins to smooth out. It reminds me of overdriven amps through overdriven mic preamps onto overdriven tape, and that's a sound I like a lot. There's also enough gain and boost available to really make you stand out in your band, but this pedal sounds best as a hard fuzzed rhythm machine.

On bass, the Torn's Peaker has similar qualities to guitar, givng you fat fuzzy sounds to drive the band, or just make everything sound like a wall of fuzz death. Your choice, it all depends on context.

One minus point is on some settings the background noise can pretty high, but you don't notice when you're playing, and you buy a pedal like this to play, to inspire you to greater things, not to listen to the background noise! This thing has spirit.

Nothing is perfect, but the Torn's Peaker does exactly what it is meant to do, and gives me exactly the sound I wanted. It gets a 10 for that.

The Torn's Peaker is housed in an MXR sized hammond, so the case should last longer than you do. The solder work that you can see inside is very clean. The pots and (true) bypass will break eventually, but that's the same with all pedals.

I'm confident enough to use this without a backup, but I always have other fuzzes around anyway.

I suppose the battery will die, so take a spare.

I bought this pedal after seeing it at www.effector13.com and liking the sound samples. I mailed them about using it with an active bass (I've had bad results with some fuzzes) and they were friendly and helpful. Replies were swift, even AFTER they had my money, and I wish I could say that about all the companies I've dealt with!

The pedal was shipped internationally the 1st working day after payment was received (I paid on a Sunday) and arrived within a week, well packaged.

I'm very confident that Effector 13 will continue to offer such good support to their customers, and I look foward to trying more of their products.

My band plays fast noisy pop, like Mudhoney, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, The Misifits and Pretty Girls Make Graves getting it on together. The Torn's Peaker isn't a pedal I'd use for every song, or even all through every song, but it does make the songs, and the band sound better. Bigger, noiser, and more dangerous.

If this pedal was stolen, I'd buy it again straight away. If I had a big show I might even pay to get it shipped priority internationally beforehand.

This pedal makes me really happy. It's made my band happy. That's a good thing.