Nearly thirty years ago, I had to replace the main chip in a malfunctioning RAT pedal for a customer at Winter Sound Company in Gloucester Point, Virginia. We didn’t have a matching part available, and the internet forums telling me “LM308 or GTFO” were years away from existing. My boss showed me a parts bin that had something with a matching pinout. I crudely swapped it into the pedal, it worked, and I packed things up for the customer and called to tell him it was done.
A week later, the guy came back and told me the thing was “tight and gnarly as f––k!” and asked me how I did it. I made a note to remember what happened and thought that maybe I’d try it again. A decade or so later, that experience became the spark for a project that I thought might get me a *real* job – and it did. But instead of working for a company, it meant that we could be working for players and artists like yourself.
PRESENTING: WAVE CANNON SILICON ZERO
We previously did a small batch of these as the “Amber Waves of Gain” for the 4th of July and they were gone in seven minutes! While we don’t anticipate quite the same outcome here (we’re playing it a *bit* straighter with the presentation) I can assure you that this is the same really beautiful, bad ass limited drop for the holiday.
You want to skip my rambling and just get yours? You can get it right here from our site – select Silicon Zero from the drop down version menu and check out. You can also just scroll to the Youtube clips as well.
LONG RANT WARNING.
Now candidly, why might people want something that on paper has less headroom (and possibly less versatility) than our standard Wave Cannon Zero?
Well, just like how religions, triangles, and movie series often work out to trilogies, I think it’s three things.
1. The silicon diodes (in this one, a mismatched NOS Toshiba 1588 and 4001) crunch faster and get hairier at 12:00 and up, and that makes for a pleasing amount of compression and a bit softer upper midrange EQ for folks. I think some people who love the classics really prefer their distortion pedals to be really *distorting* and then using their playing or dynamics to control for it, so when they really dig in, they feel it really *smoosh* and get hairier.
2. It’s still a Wave Cannon, which means that shape control helps you dial in the lower gain settings really nicely. There’s heft in the lower gain settings, with cleaner/mildly crunchy settings if you prefer to stack different kinds of rhythm drives for your leads. And the Zero’s “First/Not First” control lets you still get the havoc mayhem even if you run something in front of it.
3. Sometimes…you just want different colors. Me too! I’ve been holding out on different Adidas and Puma sneakers for the holiday because I dig the shoes, but I just want a different color way. The silicon zero’s bluish-grey, white, and orange combo looks dope as hell, and the silver topped pointers really give it a “destructive appliance/device” vibe. It’s us hat-tipping a little bit to the black and red classics…but like our work itself, it’s a detour and departure.
Anyway, we had our friend Zach Bingham come in and play some gorgeous stuff because talk is cheap, proof is in the pudding, and sometimes, I’d just rather hear my friends play! (though I did have to try a version of “Lay It Down” cause at the Fretboard Summit, the guys at Seuf Guitars were teasing me about knowing it).
Thanks again, and once these are gone, they’re gone. We don’t sell “pedal futures”; our limited drops are either complete or in process, and ship within 24-72 hours of order receipt. Thank you for letting us make cool stuff for you.