3 Years in the making! - my acrylic-faced Mattoverse Just a Phase finally has a matching AirTrash Experimental Fuzz

When I acquired my acrylic-faced edition of Mattoverse Just a Phase Phaser back in October of 2021 - I told Matt at the time that I would love to have a matching acrylic faced AirTrash - as both use the same 3 - Red, Blue and Yellow Metallic primary colours knobs - and they would look amazing together. Matt though being a fiercely independent sort had various plans and projects to get through first, and we finally get the matching pair nearly 3 years later!

Even though both pedals are pictured above - this article is all about the AirTrash which is a cool mix of signal corrupter and fuzz. You have just 3 controls here, where Blue is the only one with a definitive label and function - Output Volume. Matt has chosen to use symbols to describe the Red and Yellow knobs’ impact, while I as a wordsmith have tried to find the correct words in order to give some kind of hint as to what is going on.

Interestingly both those dials are non-linear - the opposite of an even and predictable taper - they are in fact entirely unpredictable! The top red one is a little like tuning in a wayward radio - and has the various weird interference textures you get between stations - sometimes weird feedback, some times a degree of percolation / oscillation - it often feels somewhat random but there are some patterns there - it’s just that for every micro-movement you move into another territory. So I feel the ’Scrambler’ label is fairly apt there - indicating a semi-scrambled wireless broadcast!

The yellow one is more complex in some ways and even less predictable - it’s as if the signal kind of phases in and out of existence as you turn that knob - and you get very different textures, some decently distorted with a an entirely different type of ebb-and-flow versus the Red Scrambler - and others with everything sort of mangled and muted. I kind of like my analogy of a wayward radio - while you have 2 knobs here to dial things in and fine-tune their output. You get all manner of feedback and interference sounds - on occasion a little ring-mod-like or aliased even. For sure some really cool textures to be found if you have the patience and diligence to find them!

This pedal is a little reminiscent of my Fairfield Circuitry Roger That, and it also has aspects of the Shift Line Termofuzz - which itself has a large central non-linear, but more predictable dial - that introduces different textures as you dial it up.

The AirTrash is probably best labelled as a ’Experimental Fuzz’ - You can find some cool sounds to do the occasional riff with, while you probably wouldn’t really use it for a whole song - unless it was more of randomised background texture. It’s for sure a really unique and distinct voice - that straddles a few different categories. This definitely gets filed under ’an acquired taste’ as it won’t be for everyone. Moreover it’s extremely sensitive - much more so than most of my other fuzzes (including Germanium varieties) - it really needs to be the very first thing your guitar cable hits - to get the most out of it. Use it further down the chain and it gets progressively muted / inaudible / unusable.

Because of the nature of the constant need to tweak those knobs - this is probably best for the tabletop crowd - they can use it to mangle beats and synth lines and pads. It’s far more tricky deploying it purely on the floor as a stompbox. Both the Red and Yellow dials really are quite sensitive too - so you’re best dialling those in by hand. I’m personally very dextrous with my big toes - but this pedal is alas a step too far for them in that regard - as a lot of the time you need the tiniest and most delicate of moments.