Old Blood Noise Endeavors Alpha Haunt

The Old Blood Noise Endeavors Alpha Haunt is a silicon high-gain gated fuzz pedal, and the expanded version of the company's Haunt fuzz¹. Where the Haunt is a fairly compact dirt box, the Alpha Haunt takes the same idea and adds a parallel clean-blend circuit, a three-band EQ and a stack of voicing switches, for 12 controls in total². The maker describes the range as "allowing both softer and gnarlier sounds than the original, from smooth overdrive to crumbling fuzz"¹.

The pedal was introduced in 2018 as a limited run³⁴, and Old Blood Noise Endeavors revamped it for 2021 in a smaller enclosure with new artwork, keeping the circuit intact⁵⁶. It is made in the USA⁷ and lists at $229⁸.

A gated silicon fuzz

The Alpha Haunt is built on two circuits running in parallel: a fuzz circuit and an "enhance" circuit, each with its own volume control¹⁰. The fuzz side is silicon-based¹¹¹, and its Gate control sets the compression of the fuzz, which also increases the amount of fuzz as it is turned up¹. Gating is what lets a fuzz like this go from a smooth, sustained wall to sputtering, splatty decay as you dial it back, and the Bias toggle shifts that gating character further¹.

The Enhance circuit is the other half of the design. It is a boost circuit whose volume control blends full-frequency, un-fuzzed sound in alongside the fuzz¹. GuitarPlayer described the enhance knob as "a clean boost that delivers greater string-clarity and deep low-end tones"², and Delicious Audio said it lets players "bring in body and clarity"⁶. For a player who wants fuzz without losing the low end or the attack of the picking, that parallel blend is the feature that separates the Alpha Haunt from a straightforward fuzz box.

The fuzz circuit itself has a pair of ranges to pick from, with control over gain, compression, tone and bias¹⁰. Delicious Audio summed up the pedal's territory as "a vast range of fuzz textures, from open overdrives to squashed sputters"⁶.

The controls

The current Alpha Haunt carries six knobs, three toggles and a three-band slider EQ⁶². Here is what each one does, per the maker's product page¹.

A few things worth knowing about how the layout has changed. On the original Alpha Haunt, bias was a knob; on the 2021 version it became a toggle switch serving the same function²³. Guitar.com's Daniel Seah noted the bias control "lets you go from fat to splatty sounds"³. The three-band EQ is an active master EQ with slide controls for low, mid and high frequencies⁶, and MusicRadar's Rob Laing called it "intuitive and tangible control when it comes to shaping your sound"¹².

The Haunt and the Alpha Haunt compared

The Haunt came first and is the simpler pedal. MusicRadar lists its controls as Vol, Fuzz, Gate, Mix, Tone, Low and Range, with input, output and power sockets, true bypass, and a launch price of $270¹³. Its Mode toggle switches between two combinations of silicon transistors, and its Bass toggle adds an additional low-end boost to the effected signal¹⁴. The current maker price for the Haunt is $189⁸.

On where the Haunt's circuit came from, MusicRadar's fuzz buying guide notes that before founding OBNE, Brady Smith produced a number of units of a gated fuzz called the Gatekeeper under his Little Axe Effects moniker, and that "it seems likely that a tweaked and refined version of this pedal went on to become the Haunt, one of the first pedals released by OBNE"¹³. The same guide describes the Haunt as transistor-based and "probably in the extended family tree of the Big Muff or Tonebender"¹³, though it is not a straight Big Muff derivative.

The 2021 update

The Alpha Haunt was announced on 12 June 2018 as a limited-run boutique fuzz¹⁵, with the first batch of 175 pedals in gold, sold exclusively through OBNE's Reverb page¹⁵. Guitar.com's review of that original measured it at 143 x 121 x 58mm⁷.

Two years later, OBNE introduced an updated and streamlined version for 2021⁹¹². The circuit was unchanged⁶, but the enclosure was scaled down into a more pedalboard-friendly package⁹⁶, the layout was reorganized with plastic caps on the EQ sliders³, and the artwork was redone by Daniel Danger⁶⁹³. The bias knob became a toggle², and the tone circuit of the original was retained⁴. The 2021 version began shipping on 4 February 2021 at $229⁹³, with its own first run limited to 175 units in gold³⁹².

The maker's own framing for the update was straightforward:

What reviewers said

Guitar.com reviewed the original Alpha Haunt in November 2018 and was positive about the core sound: "The fuzz is exactly how it should be: full and smooth, and running all the way from a gentle 'furring up' effect to a totally immersive cloud of rich, honeyish noise"⁷. Gearnews called the pedal "widely respected" when the 2021 update arrived⁴.

Delicious Audio's 2022 fuzz roundup highlighted the Alpha Haunt V2's flexibility: "With a 3-band EQ and controls for fuzz, compression, gating, parallel clean blend, and 3 voicing switches, the Alpha Haunt can be just about any kind of fuzz you want it to be"¹⁶. MusicRadar's coverage of the 2021 version pointed to the switchable fuzz range, bias and tone control voices as features that "will widen your horizons further"¹².

For the smaller Haunt, MusicRadar's buying guide listed "good range of tones on offer" and "extreme sounds also available" as reasons to buy, with "hard to control at extreme settings" as the reason to avoid¹³. That trade-off, a deep control set that rewards patience, is the through-line of both pedals: the Alpha Haunt simply gives you more of it, at the cost of more pedalboard real estate than the Haunt and a strictly external power requirement.

Videos

Click to load

Click to load

Click to load

News

Questions