Ritual Devices' Grimalking Hybrid Octave Multi-Fuzz delivers the most visceral all-round fuzz experience - spanning overdrive to total Doom annihilation
I’m so glad the Ritual Devices project is pack on track and I get to experience these wonderful pedals first-hand! This time around it’s the time of the magnificent Grimalkin Hybrid Octave Fuzz - a suitably cat-themed affair as Grimalkin is the archaic term for felines!
What we have here is an extraordinary potent all-rounder Fuzz - which at it’s core consists of 2 dual gain stages with 3 overall Gain Controls - a Master Gain, a Pre-Gain, and Post-Gain. Those knobs between them will give you near enough every shade of Fuzz - in fact from a relatively clean overdrive at the lower end of the gain, to a full fire-breathing dragon with all of those relatively peaked. In between you can get velcro fuzzes, classic fuzzes, synth fuzzes and octave fuzzes - where the Howl Voltage Bias is the 4th important component in the sound design - producing a potent upper octave as you spin it past the midway mark.
Controls - Claw (Volume), Howl (Voltage Bias / Octave), Fuzz (Master Gain), Fur (Pre-Gain), Attack (Post-Gain).
Note that dialling the Fur and Attack knobs al the way back will kill your signal - so the circuit is effectively as bypass if one or the other is in the lowest 7 o’c position. They start coming into effect at 8 o’c - and deliver a cool and not dirty overdrive as I first thought it might do - but actually a relatively mild and smooth one - which you can then progressively crank the Gain knobs to take you though dirty drive, fuzzy-drive, and onto full blown fuzz of course.
It’s actually pretty surprising how interactive the 5 dials are - as each of those moved a fraction can impart a different texture or character. Wub warned me that the pedal could be noisy - but it’s in the same loop as all my high gain pedals - and thus benefits from a noise gate.
In any case there are so many interesting directions to go here - with the Howl Bias knob increasingly important in defining the fuzz character. I was surprised not to see an EQ control here - but you don’t really need it - there are sufficient variations onboard to cater for most tastes.
My only tiny niggle here is in the output volume. This went on the board at the same time as the Hello Sailor Effects Monmouth Octave Fuzz and Spaceman Effects Rumblefuzz II - where both of those have very substantive output levels - and are already pretty loud at noon. But where I do need to post-boost the Grimalkin to get it up to unity with the other 49 pedals on the board. It's no bother though as I specifically have pedals in the chain for those purposes - but it would be nice to have the pedal fully self-sufficient volume-wise at some stage.
Apart from a volume boost, the only other change I might consider making here is introducing a noise gate into the circuit - via 6th central knob - that would allow you to place the pedal anywhere in your signal chain - but of course that's just a nice to have, not essential.
I think the only downside with this pedal really is that there are so many different flavours to be found here - that it would probably be cool to have a chart of recommended settings to get you into all the ballparks - and to illustrate just how versatile this pedal is.
As I noted - the dials are incredibly interactive and impart slightly different fuzz characteristics with every tiny shift - you really need some sort of reference chart to easily access all the myriad flavours onboard.
There's no doubt about it - this is a magnificent circuit - it can be raw and unyielding at its peaks - but you can temper that output in so many ways. This is one for the Fuzz fans for sure - fun for days!
My preferred settings are various, while I really like this monster output one :
Claw (Volume) @ Max, Howl (Voltage Bias / Octave) @ 3 o'c, Fuzz (Master Gain) @ Noon, Fur (Pre-Gain) @ Noon, and Attack (Post-Gain) @ 9 o'c. The Fur and Attack knobs are particularly sensitive - and normally when I dial one up, I dial the other one down at the same time. If you raise both the Fur and Attack together - then the gain quickly becomes overloaded and kind of chokes out in a similar fashion to the Fuzz Mode on the LM308 Expandoras.
I think I mentioned that you can turn the Master Gain / Fuzz all the way down and still get signal, while with Fur and Attack - all the way back cuts signal - they both come on properly at around 8 o'c - and some quite subtle Overdrive voicings can be had by having Fuzz all the way down - and just slightly nudging up Fur and Attack. Those controls have a significant impact on the fuzz character in any case. There are just so many cool tones onboard - Overdrive, Fuzzy-Drive, Classic Fuzz, Synth Fuzz, Octave Fuzz and Doom Fuzz just for starters! Very impressive!
The Grimalkin is available for orders direct from the Ritual Devices Webstore - for just £195 which is frankly a bargain - considering how many steps go into just the acid-etching and finishing of that enclosure. I've oft called these intricate enclosures - Victorian style trinket boxes before - and there's certainly a flavour of Victorian arts and crafts in those sort of enamel designs.
The Grimalkin is one of the greatest all-rounder fuzzes out there - really needs to be witnessed so you can see for yourself just how versatile and potent this Fuzz is. A very unique Fuzz, with a unique control topology. Internally we have those twin dual gain-stages - an NE5542 Dual OpAmp and then 2 x 2N2222A Silicon Transistors. So in effect 4 gain stages like a Big Muff - but really nothing like a Big Muff - the Grimalkin is figuratively and literally a Beast! - with Claws!
It's nigh perfect as it is - just needs a touch more output volume for my preferences!
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