Richard McIntosh's Laowiz Cyst Mode Filter Drive generates some of the most visceral Distortion and Fuzz Textures available anywhere

I’m a huge fan of richly textured gain pedals - and here with the astute use of resonant filters, clipping diodes and powerful tone-shaping we get one of the ultimate ’noise-boxes’. I always identify myself as a noisemaker first and foremost - and I love generating those otherworldly wall of sound earth-shaking tones - whether sludgy, doomy or all-round speaker-shredding.

And while I’m sure you could tone down the output of this machine - it’s really all about making glorious noise in various ways.

The pedal is neatly split into 3 segments / sections - but for me not all the controls necessarily make sense in how they’re grouped. The Post section for sure fully holds together with its combination of Hi and Lo tone-shaping and Output Volume.

But then on the other side you get a mixture of Distortion, Filter, and EQ. Where the filter only applies if the central Mode Switch is flipped to DP (Depth) position. If it’s on the CY / Cyst Mode side - then the 4-position Filter Selector Dial kicks in - which has different presets / settings for the core filter - delivering different sensitivity / attack, sustain and resonance. The documentation doesn’t really go into too much detail on those - you just need to try them all out and see what sticks.

And while this pedal is classified as a Filter Drive - it really rather more yields as a Filter-Distortion or Filter-Fuzz even. It reminds me of the superb Intensive Care Audio Vena Cava Filter which is also a Filter-Distorion of sorts - but with LFO and different wave-shapes, and ring modulation on top of that.

I think I have a few Filter-Drive/Distoriton/Fuzz pedals - and it’s a category I really can’t get enough of. As my good friend Phil at Pedal Experiments says - this is great for that standout set piece blistering solo - but I like its textures for all manner of rhythm-playing applications too.

Get the right resonant filter to marry an already glorious breakup and saturation texture and you have the makings of a superior noisemaker for sure. I’ve placed the pedal in a fairly aggressive yellow background to emphasise that this can create some superbly ’nasty’ dirty tones - in the best way of course.

These are really well-priced currently at $200 - via the Laowiz Fuzz Shop - or you can reach out direct to Richard via his Instagram - www.instagram.com/laowiz/.

I would certainly love to get my hands on one of these - and I will for sure be reaching out to Richard soon enough. Alas for this month - I kind of blew the budget on the new Chase Bliss Lossy - so we’ll have to see how much is left in the kitty at the end of the month! Perhaps there is a deal to be done here - we’ll see?

My good friend Phil certainly did all the right things in his below demo to pique my interest - a really great sounding pedal for sure!