Caroline Guitar Company Wave Cannon

The Wave Cannon is a distortion pedal made by Caroline Guitar Company, and it was the company's very first product when it appeared in 2010¹²³. Caroline describes the original circuit as a tribute to its favorite op-amp fuzzes and distortions of the 1970s and 1980s, and in the maker's words it covers ground from a "clean" boost to full gain⁴. What has always set it apart from an ordinary distortion box is the Havoc switch, a second footswitch that sends the pedal into controllable feedback chaos.

The line has gone through several versions: the original Wave Cannon (sometimes called the MKI), the Wave Cannon MKII Superdistorter, and the third-generation Wave Cannon Zero⁵.

What it does

In its normal mode the Wave Cannon is a distortion pedal. Guitar World's video review of the original quoted Caroline's own framing: in distortion mode it is "a veritable Swiss army knife of overdrive sounds, capable of going from a 'clean' boost all the way to amber waves of gain"⁴. The maker also called it simply an overdrive in early materials¹, which tells you where it sits: it can back off into light drive territory or push into full distortion.

The circuit lineage is unusually specific. Caroline's Philippe named the pedals behind it: "Ibanez Sonic Distortions and Fat Cats, Proco Rats, grey DOD 250s, the first block logo MXR Distortion+ I owned"⁹. Those are op-amp and diode-clipping distortions from the 1970s and early 1980s, so the Wave Cannon is a modern take on that family rather than a Tube Screamer descendant.

For bass players, Caroline voiced the input and drive sections to work with both bass and guitar, with a thicker low end, rather than fitting the larger input capacitor of a dedicated bass distortion¹⁰. The pedal also traveled the country in a "tour box" on The Gear Page, where members signed up to try it¹¹.

The controls and the Havoc switch

The original Wave Cannon shipped with control symbols rather than labeled knobs, and Caroline noted that Caroline Guitar Company's reviewer "bravely explains what each of our control symbols is meant to do"¹. The control set has grown with each version:

The Focus knob on the MKII is, in the words of Pedal of the Day's reviewer Mike B, "basically a mid-range only control," the fourth knob alongside Volume, Gain and Tone¹². He found Volume, Gain and Tone "relatively easy to figure out," though he noted the pedal's "funky graphics, odd switches and absolutely ZERO labeling of the controls"¹².

The Havoc switch is the pedal's signature. Guitar World describes it on the Zero as "a secondary footswitch that generates wild feedback, warped and shifted by the knobs or even your guitar's controls"¹⁵. Caroline's own early demo footage of Matt Warder and Eddie Berman showed the switch being hit mid-demo, and the company later described the result as "a brief but eventful visit to the chaos of Havocswitchlandia"¹⁶. On the Zero, the Havoc circuit gained its own control for tuning and mixing the feedback signal, and Caroline says the pedal "can now function both as the first thing your guitar sees OR later in the signal chain"⁵.

Two related controls shape the sound further on later versions. The Voltage trimmer (the Volts or Starve knob) "opens up extra sonic options, turning classic distortion/fuzzes tones into gated and velcroy versions of themselves, emulating a dying battery," in Delicious Audio's description¹⁴. A Rumble switch adds deep low end¹⁴. On the Wave Cannon Custom, Caroline could relocate the mini toggle so the owner had the option of momentary havoc, or flipping the switch and staying in havoc mode¹⁷.

History and versions: from op-amp fuzz to the MKII

The Wave Cannon v1 was Caroline's first entry into the stompbox world¹, and the maker describes it as an overdrive¹. The company says the MKII circuit is different from the original, "which was based on the classic '70s fuzzstortions we grew up playing"¹⁸.

The Wave Cannon MKII Superdistorter, version 2.0 of the pedal, is a different circuit. Caroline is direct about the break: "It's different than the original, which was based on the classic '70s fuzzstortions we grew up playing"¹⁸. The company describes the MKII as "capable of going from cranked, lightly dirty amp tones to the sound of a furry Godzilla devouring a junkyard full of broken a/c window units"¹⁸, and RockBoard's PedalPedia entry calls it "an unrepentant, unapologetic distortion pedal that is totally nasty and fun"⁸.

The third generation, the Wave Cannon Zero, carries the Wave Cannon line forward for Caroline⁵.

Videos

Click to load

Click to load

Click to load