EARTHQUAKER DEVICES LIFE PEDAL V2 FUZZ/DISTORTION
The holidays are over and we’ve brought something back with us: the Earthquaker Devices Life Pedal V2. No longer cloaked in secrecy, the Life Pedal V2 is the second distortion and boost with a blendable octave that EQD has engineered in collaboration with drone metal pioneers SUNN, housing it this time in an Earthquaker-style chassis with top-mounted controls. And you bet your life this will sell out in a flash, just like the first.
Henry describes the life pedal v2
Hello again, Internet. I'm Henry Bianco with Chicago Music Exchange. And today, we're talking about the Earthquaker Devices Life Pedal V2. This distortion and boost pedal with Blundell. Octave is a collaboration between Earth Quaker and drone metal pioneers. Sun O))), you may have noticed I called this Life Pedal V2. That implies there is a V1 and there was indeed with the release of the last Sun O))) record.
They did a limited edition version of this pedal, highly coveted. They flew off the shelves. Because of that Earthquaker decided to do another limited run, this time called V2 in a more recognizable Earthquaker style housing with the exact same circuitry and functionality as the original Life Pedal had.
The pedal has three main sections distortion, octave and boost, the distortion section is faithful to everyone's favorite old Rat pedal down to the original LM308 IC chips and tantalum capacitors. The octave section is based on a couple old Shin-Ei, octave fuzz pedals and the boost section is a MOSFET design that'll stay clean pretty much up until you don't want it to anymore.
If we can take a quick tour of the front of the pedal, the top row is a Rat section. From left to right you've got amplitude, that's your volume. Filter, which just like on an original Rat pedal actually works kind of backwards from what you might think.
It goes counterclockwise, more treble, clockwise, less treble, and the distortion knob, has about 60 decibels of gain on tap. Below that in the center is a three position rotary selector from right to left, you've got symmetrical, which is standard stock to the original Rat design in the center is asymmetrical.
That's gonna give you a little bit more of a smooth tube-like valve amp distortion and then all the way to the left as OP AMP, which bypasses the diodes completely and is gonna be the most volume you have on tap. To the right of that is your octave blend, and to the left is the boost control. That's the volume of your boost called magnitude on the pedal.
One thing worth mentioning with that Octave is that it is an analog design, meaning it's monophonic. So you're basically going to get along best with playing single notes up the neck near the 12th fret on the neck pickup, just like your standard sort of Octavia type effects. It's probably easy to think that this pedal is just designed to do the drone metal thing and it definitely does that, but it actually does a lot more too. I've really enjoyed that. It is kind of just the best Rat you're maybe ever gonna hear along with a really cool octave sound and a boost.
It kind of does something really interesting that no other pedal I have does and is really inspirational in a full band context.