“With proper playing dynamics, this creates a very cool effect that can sound like an exploding amp coming in and out of life”: EarthQuaker Devices and Lee Kiernan of IDLES introduce Gary, a drive/fuzz wildcard for maverick tone-seekers

EarthQuaker Devices’ president and founder Jamie Stillman and IDLES guitarist Lee Kiernan have only gone and put their heads together and designed a guitar effects pedal named Gary.

But what does Gary do? Well, if you’re thinking to yourself, that given the principals involved here, messrs Stillman and Kiernan, that this stompbox unlikely to be a clean boost or a garden variety Klon clone, you’d be right.

Gary is [deep breath] an “Automatic Pulse Width Modulation Fuzz and Dynamic Natural Overdrive” and it is a twofer that offers a “simple and natural” sounding overdrive on one side, and a more anarchic interactive fuzz with “an envelope-controlled variable pulse width and enough volume to blow everything up”.

Gary is very much a Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde kind of deal, and these two sides of his/its personality can be combined to devastating effect. These are of course the kind of high-volume dynamics that Kiernan specialises in.

You don’t even need to tune into the demo video to get an idea of just how radical the fuzz side of this pedal is. The fuzz circuit is designed to interact with your playing. How you set the Yes! control determines just how it is going to interact, how sensitive the envelope is.

This fuzz turns the signal from your guitar into a square wave. Keep the Yes! dial down low and it is thick and sustaining – “an unadulterated thick and heavy square wave fuzz tone that will sustain for days and go dead quiet when you stop playing”.

Gary Automatic Pulse Width Modulation Fuzz and Dynamic Natural Overdrive - YouTube

Watch On

Turn the Yes! dial up and the envelope is more interactive and as you dig in with your guitar pick the tone starts to take on a “nasal and biting” quality. Turn it all the way up and your sound will disappear at points, only to reappear, a sound that those maniacs at EQD describe as “an exploding amp coming in and out of life, blown through a phase shifter”.

Okay, that’s your electric guitar tone for Friday night sorted out. But what about the rest of the week, when you need something a little more sober? For that we have the good Dr Jekyll, an overdrive that should be familiar to longtime EQD aficionados. This drive circuit is based on the Green channel of EQD’s discontinued Gray Channel overdrive pedal.

Image 1 of 4

The Gray Channel is a mainstay in Kiernan’s pedalboard. He runs it with the clipping diodes deactivated, so all he is getting is op-amp distortion straight to his amp. This is exactly what you get here.

Both fuzz and overdrive have their own respective footswitches, and there is an expression pedal input for controlling the pulse width. As for the other knobs, Go is the overdrive’s gain control, That’s It is the overdrive’s master volume, Oosh is the master volume for the fuzz.

Put all this together and you have a compact pedal with an all-analogue signal path that’s capable of going berserk on your tone with howling at the moon fuzz sounds, or full-on distortion.

But Gary is a well-rounded design. No, it’s not a clean boost but you can dial it in as a boost if that’s what you need. Very clever. And it has top-mounted jacks for easy mounting, silent relay-based switching with Flexi-Switch tech, and it is true bypass.

There’s a limited edition Reverb exclusive in a red-and-brown enclosure, which is limited to 500 units. The regular Gary is available everywhere else. Both are priced £/$199 and are available now. See EarthQuaker Devices for more details.