So I pulled this pocketful of dirtyness out of the vaults for Saturday’s debut gig with Kindred Spirit, not having used it for something like 3 years. Yes, rock guitarists, it is a metal guitar fuzz pedal! However, since a lot of violin register is about the same as heavy guitar soloing range (who really plays screaming solos on the bottom three strings?), and since blunt effects like this sound pretty similar regardless of the timbre of the note fed into them, it requires surprisingly little tweaking to be a reasonable effect on an amplified violin. Basically, I set the EQ somewhat oddly (an upper-mid notch but probably more top end than most guitarists would use – violin can go about an octave higher than a conventional guitar remember), keep the amount of distortion fairly well down so it’s more in the realms of very gritty overdrive than total overboard metal fuzzcloud, and go.

Of course, it will still get more effective with practical use and trial-and-error refinement. For reasons which are beyond my knowledge of electroacoustics, the distorted sound is more given to feeding back through monitors than the clean one at the same volume level – but I need to stick to my guns and not turn the volume down on the pedal, otherwise the distorted sound (logically used for aggressive rock violin solos and lead lines) is quieter than the default clean one …

It’s likely that other stompboxes will be given a tryout at some point, with Kindred Spirit at least. I have my eye on a genuine overdrive to bridge the gap between this and clean (possibly letting me set this a bit further ‘out’ and use it more sparingly by the same token), and would be interested in a standalone reverb unit so I can alter that as an effect (think Chicago blues where it’s in the guitar amp, rather than making the whole band sound like they’re playing in a big hard-surfaced room) between songs without having to reach the PA mixer.

As I always seem to sign off these posts, watch this space …