Haunted Labs Carolina Reaper

The Carolina Reaper is a dual-function overdrive and fuzz pedal from Haunted Labs, built in collaboration with Cusack Music. The right side of the enclosure holds a high-gain germanium overdrive circuit, while the left side hosts a scalding high-gain silicon fuzz¹². Each circuit can be used on its own, or the two can run together with the overdrive feeding into the fuzz².

It was announced in April 2019 as a limited run of 50 units, hand numbered and signed, priced at $229²³. MusicRadar also listed a UK price of £183 at launch⁴.

A germanium overdrive and a silicon fuzz in one pedal

The two halves of the Carolina Reaper are deliberately different animals. The right side is a high-gain germanium overdrive circuit that Cusack Music describes with typical Haunted Labs color: it "will leave your guitar screaming"¹. The left side is a silicon fuzz, and Premier Guitar's reviewer found that the silicon fuzz side "has surprising range, too"⁵.

The two circuits are independent, so you can treat the pedal as either an overdrive or a fuzz, but the stacked mode is the headline act. Run together, the overdrive feeds into the fuzz, and Haunted Labs says using both channels at once will "open a portal to intergalactic doom"⁴. Guitar.com's Daniel Ong reported that the overdrive side "can elicit piercing wails"⁶, which gives a sense of where the circuit sits on the gain spectrum.

For a player, the appeal is having two gain stages in one box: a germanium-voiced overdrive for lower-gain push and a silicon fuzz for full saturation, with the option to cascade one into the other rather than stacking two separate pedals²⁵³.

The controls: fuzz side and overdrive side

The pedal carries six knobs, three per side, plus soft-touch footswitches for each circuit¹².

The Bias knob on the fuzz side is the control that sets this pedal apart from a basic two-knob fuzz. It lets you adjust the silicon fuzz circuit to your liking from the front panel². Beyond that, the pedal also includes an internal bias trimmer, which Premier Guitar's press coverage called "a cool hidden feature that allows users to adjust the silicon fuzz c"ircuit further². Between the external knob and the internal trimmer, a player has two layers of control over how the fuzz biases, which matters for anything from gated, sputtery textures to smoother, more open saturation.

Premier Guitar's reviewer noted that the footswitch and three controls to the right of center, including the knob that serves as the Reaper's right eye, govern the overdrive side's gain, volume and tone⁵, a nod to the pedal's faceplate design.

Power: 9V, about 30mA

The Carolina Reaper runs on a 9V barrel adapter only. There is no battery compartment, and the power supply is not included, so you need to supply your own 9V DC supply¹². Current draw is about 30mA².

At roughly 30mA, the draw is modest by modern standards, so a typical multi-output supply will run it without strain².

History: the Cusack Music collaboration and the limited run

The Carolina Reaper was coproduced by Haunted Labs and Cusack Music, and Cusack Music describes it as "the spawn of a diabolical collaboration with Cusack Music"¹. Premier Guitar's review identified it as the first Haunted Labs pedal to be coproduced with Cusack Music⁵, and the launch was covered across the gear press, with Guitar World, MusicRadar and Guitar.com all reporting on the pedal⁵.

The run was deliberately small: 50 units, each hand numbered and signed³. The pedal was sold directly through the Haunted Labs online store at hauntedlabs.com². Every unit was designed, engineered and manufactured in the USA, with Haunted Labs stating it used the highest quality parts available¹².

The Carolina Reaper stands apart from Haunted Labs' other fuzz releases of the period, such as the Paranormal Fuzz V2, the Scorched Earth and the Frostbite Fuzz, because it was the first Haunted Labs pedal to be coproduced with Cusack Music⁵.

What reviewers said

Premier Guitar reviewed the pedal in August 2021 and found the germanium overdrive side particularly effective in a specific setting: the reviewer wrote that "the germanium overdrive excels with small amps, and it's easy to get pungent, crusty Angus Young-style gain that would s"uit studio use⁵. That points to the overdrive working best as a cranked-small-amp texture rather than a clean boost, with a vintage-leaning character from the germanium circuit.

The same reviewer found the silicon fuzz side had more range than its single-knob simplicity might suggest⁵, which lines up with the Bias control giving the player a way to reshape the fuzz's character beyond a simple volume-and-fuzz setup.

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