Time for a slice of Kiwiana now. It might be all buzzy bees and fush ‘n chups to everyone else, but for fx pedal junkies, it’s all about Crowther Audio’s Hot Cake and Prunes & Custard pedals. It’s not easy to describe exactly what this thing sounds like, but ‘Harmonic Generator-Intermodular’ seems to sum it up nicely. The Datsuns liked that phrase so much they wrote it into the lyrics of a song. I prefer to keep this guy tucked away until the last second before the climax of a song, and unleash the flurry of harmonic overtones it can produce across a pretty impressive dynamic range.

Tags: crowther audio, pedal, prunes and custard

Dave and Ryan extract satanic sounds from the Rhodes, care of the new DigiTech Time Bender.

Speaking of squelchy funk, if you’re looking for the quintessential 70s space-funk bass tone, the EH Q-Tron is probably (besides the Mu-Tron III if you can still find one these days) the best in the business. The sheer tweakability of this pedal makes it incredibly vertsatile, and the Q-Tron+ has the added bonus of an internal effects loop, which lets you plug other pedals in between its filter stages. Stick a fuzz pedal in there to create your own Frankenstein funk sound.

Quite possibly the best and most renown synth bass pedal around, the Deep Impact instantly turns a bass guitar into an explosion of realistic synthesizer sounds. From buzzsaw leads, funk squelches, deep sub-bass booms, and wall-of-sound pads, this does ‘em all. I scored this one from a guitarist who had bought it having no idea what it was, couldn’t figure it out and sold it for a little over a hundred bucks. Rare as hens teeth, these days they fetch upward of US$800 on eBay.

We’re big on technology in this band.

Amps, synths, keyboards, samplers, computers, blenders, toasted sandwich makers, and most importantly, effects pedals. We’re big on pedals, and Dave Holmes, our producer, is a man who’s renowned for his formidable collection of pedals. We get on well.

So as we’re in the house, surrounded by dozens of pedals for the next few weeks, I thought it might be fun to show off some of the particularly special pedals that are being used on this album each day.

First up, the legendary Akai ‘Deep Impact’…