The Maggotor is a gated fuzz pedal announced at NAMM 2020 as the second collaboration between Fuzzrocious Pedals and Electro-Faustus. Delicious Audio described it as a gated fuzz "decomposer," a pedal that combines Fuzzrocious' Baby Furnace circuit with Electro-Faustus' Blackfly, and it was produced in limited numbers1. It sits in the wider world of fuzz pedals, a corner Fuzzrocious has returned to often, from the Gray Stache to the Heliotropic.
What it does
The Maggotor gives you two channels of differently-voiced fuzz, and a clean blend is available on both channels, so you can keep some of your instrument's dry signal underneath the fuzz1. A clean blend is a useful thing on a fuzz, because it lets the low end of a bass or a baritone guitar survive under a circuit that would otherwise thin it out.
The pedal's features, as announced:
- Two channels of fuzz, drawn from the Baby Furnace and Blackfly circuits1
- Clean blend on both channels1
- A Bite mode, in which any instrument can be used with the Baby Furnace portion of the pedal1
- A playable enclosure, with surface mounted springs that can be played or banged on1
The pedal's headline feature is its Bite mode. In Bite mode, any instrument can be used with the Baby Furnace portion of the pedal, providing what the announcement called a unique, original, gated fuzz sound1. The "decomposer" in the name points to the rest of the design: the pedal can also be played on its own, using its surface mounted springs, or just by banging on it, turning the enclosure itself into a playable surface1.
As a fuzz box, Delicious Audio's Alex Maiolo wrote, "it's too many types of gnarly to describe"1.
Where it came from
The Maggotor was announced on 19 January 2020 as one of Fuzzrocious' new pedals for NAMM 2020, and it was the second time the company had collaborated with Electro-Faustus1. Fuzzrocious has a history of pairing its fuzz circuits with other makers' designs and with outside ideas:
| Pedal | Collaboration | Year |
|---|---|---|
| Blast Furnace | Lehigh Mining & Navigation | 2017 |
| 420 Fuzz | Reverb.com exclusive | 2018 |
| Maggotor | Electro-Faustus | 2020 |
Later collaborations produced the Electric Ocean fuzz and phaser with Dunwich Amplification and the Gray Stache/Heliotropic double fuzz1.
The Maggotor was a limited production run announced in 2020, so it is not a pedal you would expect to find in current dealer stock. Fuzzrocious' current range includes other gated and blended fuzz designs, such as the GreyFly and the M.O.T.H..
Videos
Fuzzrocious Pedals
Sources (1)
- New For NAMM 2020: Fuzzrocious Maggotor Gated Fuzz, Delicious Audio, 2020-01-19
