Stone Deaf FX has released the Rise And Shine, a guitar effects pedal that combines octave fuzz with OctaPulse tremolo, and gives players an array of options for shaping their electronic guitar tone for all kinds of styles.
Who is this pedal made for? It might be easier to talk about the playing styles that would not benefit from a throaty, dynamic fuzz with a little octave-up magic. The Rise And Shine is just as capable of dialling in some rambunctious metal sounds as it is in complementing your Fender Strat’s neck pickup for some Stevie Ray Vaughan tones.
This is Stone Deaf’s first new pedal in three years. It looks like it was worth the wait. And while there looks to be a lot going on here with the dual footswitches, five modes to choose from with the promise of some especially bespoke features (tapping out subdivisions for the OctaPulse tremolo sounds agreeably nuts) it does seem to be all relatively straightforward.
The enclosure has top-mounted I/O jacks, with an expression pedal input on the side of the pedal for adjusting the rate of the OctaPulse effect, or alternatively you can use an external tap tempo switch.
There are four main controls on the pedal. Volume acts as a master volume, and interacts with both Mix and Fuzz. Mix controls the wet/dry blend and be invaluable if you plan to stack this with other gain pedals or need some extra clarity on a bass guitar part.
Fuzz sets the amount of gain/fuzz in the signal, and with this promising to be quite a dynamic effect you might get some joy in setting this high and rolling off on your guitar’s volume pot to take some of the heat out.
The Tone dial is “a hybrid see-saw EQ”, meaning it both adjusts the high-pass ratio of the treble and low-pass ratio of the bass.
The two buttons is where it gets interesting. The Voice switch alternates between Bright and Fat modes, illuminating orange when the former is engaged and blue with the latter.
The Mode switch is colour-coded too. Orange is Standard mode, which means the fuzz is one when the pedal is engaged, step on the Octave footswitch to turn on the analogue octave-up effect.
Green mode is similar, except that octave footswitch becomes in momentary mode, ideal for moments where you need instant access and release, like when kicking it on for four bars of a solo. Cyan mode turns the normally latching bypass footswitch to momentary.
Magenta places the pedal into Standard Division Mode, in which you can cycle through whole, half, quarter and triplet subdivisions by holding down the Mode switch, and then tap out the tempo for the OctaPulse effect by tapping on the Voice button or via external footswitch. Other cool options are available too, such as setting maximum and minimum OctaPulse rates for using an expression pedal.
Finally, White is Custom Division Mode, wherein you can program your own subdivisions, and really get freaky deaky with weird time signatures. Very cool.
The Rise And Shine is available now, priced £250/$275. See Stone Deaf FX for more details.
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