Quick Look : Earthquaker Devices Hizumitas

I had seen a video demo of this pedal, probably on Anderton’s YouTube channel and the demonstrator got some beautiful long sustaining tones from it. I was curious and asked my friend Brendan over at The Arts Music Store to give me his opinion. He advised that it was nice enough and with some time spent was able to get the heard violin tone from it.

I was intrigued because Earthquaker makes no such claims about the pedal. Their materials say it is their effort to reproduce the distortion pedal of musician Wata from the band Boris. As I am not exposed to this band, I can offer no opinion on their success. The pedal is based on an Elk which is modeled on a Triangle Big Muff Pi. I am not a Big Muff Pi fan, no matter which of the multiple iterations I have tried but wanted to be open minded as I do seek that violin like sustain.

Following Brendan’s comments, I wanted to see if an adequate player such as myself could coax the violin tones from the pedal and arranged to borrow one for a day to find out.

I really did try. The documentation that came with the pedal was very accurate. It said unity gain at 9 o’clock and that was right on, anything after that and it got really loud really fast. It said the tone control stripped highs as you turned it clockwise and that the distortion level would go up as you turn it clockwise. In this regard, the maker is 100% honest.

Did I find that violin tone? I did not. Perhaps it was a day off for the violins. What I did find was a fuzz pedal that could play at distortion with a fair bit of grit at the low end and more grit than on a beach of broken glass when turned up. Despite faffing about with the pedal for a while, I could not find a sound that I liked before the headache became overpowering. I wiped the pedal down as I always do with eval units and ensured it was properly repackaged and returned it within my loan window.

If you are looking for a fuzz distortion like a Triangle BMP, at under $200 CAD in a regular sized stomp box, this might suit you. I do like that the jacks and power are all on the top for a cleaner pedal board install, and if you want a big punch when engaged, you can get it here. It’s certainly not for me, but it might be exactly what you are looking for. The link to the pedal on the Earthquaker page is here.

Thanks for reading and until next time, peace. On a side note, I did not want to upset the original presenter, but as I believe he was either British or Danish (as I don’t remember who it was) they referred to the graphic as rabbits with elk horns. Sadly they have no knowledge of the rare but not gone Jackelope.