EarthQuaker Devices has just unveiled a compact solution for nailing LCD Soundsystem’s gnarly fuzzed-out bass guitar sounds, teaming up with James Murphy himself to make a replica of his beat-up, vintage fuzz pedal you have most definitely heard on record and on the radio.
The pedal is called the Chelsea Low End Fuzz Driver, and it takes its name from the guitar store that Murphy first bought the pedal in 1989. It takes a lot of the sound of that original pedal, too, a “one of a kind” stompbox that maybe should have swapped out long ago and put it to pasture – only it sounded too good.
As EarthQuaker Devices founder Jamie Stillman writes in his design notes, Chelsea is based on a very special kind of pedal, and this new design promises the same range of uncompromising tones, for bass and electric guitar alike, all without the threat of “total collapse”.
“I’m going to guess that you have heard this pedal,” writes Stillman. “It has been the chosen bass fuzz for several LCD recordings and has traveled around the world with them. I’d say that it is a prized possession, a real one-of-a-kind pedal.
“It has been beat up and taped back together. It looks like it shouldn’t work but it always delivers. It is old, it is fragile, and it sounds massive. Too good to retire yet too tired to keep going.”
Chelsea is, however, designed to keep going. As with all EQD pedals, it is handmade in Akron, Ohio, shipping with a limited lifetime warranty. And unlike vintage fuzz pedals you might pick up in a late ‘80s guitar store, this is a little more pedalboard-friendly.
Your connections are all located on the top of the pedal. This takes 9V DC from a pedalboard power supply, drawing 10mA, and it is a very user-friendly design, too, not least because there are only three knobs to acquaint yourself with and there’s a very handy Tone switch too
It’s really simple. Level controls the output volume. Sustain controls the amount of distortion and sustain in the signal. Tone dials in the frequency response. And finally there’s the Tone switch that takes the Tone control out of the game, by-passing it to apply a mids-focused voicing.
Sure, we’re all thinking of those fuzz bass lines and there is no question that it does that. But EQD promises this is a deceptively versatile pedal that can apply a light drive, full-on distortion, with a “wild and wide frequency response” from that Tone knob.
Priced £189/$179, the Chelsea Low End Fuzz Driver is out now. Check it out above and at EarthQuaker Devices.
