EARTHQUAKER DEVICES

Hizumitas Fuzz Sustainer

- ART THOMPSON

A VINTAGE JAPANESE Elk BM Sustainar pedal has been the source of the bombastic tone that guitarist Wata gets in the experimental band, Boris!, and the new Hizumitas pedal is the result of Earthquaker’s efforts to re-create it. The story goes that after testing different versions of the Elk BM and finding — no surprise — that they all sounded different, Earthquaker’s designers realized the only way to reproduce the tones that Wata wields was to get their hands on her actual pedal. Amazingly, she sent it to them to evaluate, and they discovered that it indeed possessed a special circuit that produced heavy saturation and had a gritty edge and massive bottom. Yet it also had a clear and dynamic presentation, with plenty of mids and top-end bite.