Beautiful Noise Effects is best known for its large format ’When The Sun Explodes’ pedal - the ultimate tool for creating long ambient swells of atmospheric reverberation, to stuttering, chaotic feedback oscillations overloading your amplifier. Said pedal is composed of a 4-knob Reverb, alongside Distortion Gain, Feedback and Rate controls - for one of the most suitably named pedals of all time. Beautifully synesthesiastically conjuring up the very manifestation of that solar sound.
This time around Beautiful Noise’s Nick extracts and expands the core ’Exploder’ distortion circuit from that flagship pedal and adds several more controls into the mix to create a similarly associated sunburst sound - with additional white noise adding ever so suitable textures to the fringes of the output. I can just picture solar radiation ebbing and flowing and crackling with fission.
Controls - Gain, Master Volume, Clipping : Symmetric / Off / Asymmetric, EQ : Low | Mid | Hi, White Noise : W/N Level | Tone | Envelope Sensitivity.
Just by looking at the pedal and its controls you immediately get a sense of how it’s going to sound - and what a magical combination white noise makes for this kind of fuzzy distortion.
Funnily when I first glanced this pedal I thought it was a new design from Death By Audio - so similar is the styling of the graphics on the enclosure - at least to my eyes. I was of course almost instantly won over by this Exploder - where I now just need to wait for my friend Andy at Break the Machine to get some in stock.
I would probably have gone for the When The Sun Explodes too had the format been a little more pedalboard friendly. While the Exploder perfectly suits my preferences. I already have several good Reverbs in the chain - now I just need to figure out how to recreate the Oscillating Feedback part!
The Exploder White Noise Sunburst Distortion is currently available courtesy of the Beautiful Noises Webstore, and on its Reverb.com Store - for AUD $300 or around USD $215. Hopefully will be in stock at Break The Machine this side of Christmas - for an estimated £225 or thereabouts.
I’m certainly down for one of these! Anyone else here suitably impressed? It’s such a cool effect that I’m kind of surprised no one has done this before - or have they?