Stomp Under Foot's latest is the superb sounding Electric Warlord Velcro-like High Gain Fuzz

I’ve long been a fan of Matt Pasquerella’s Stomp Under Foot fuzz pedals - and probably don’t have quite as many of his as I should  - while like I keep saying - you can’t ever have them all! At some stage I will need to do a more concerted effort in getting more of Matt’s pedals into the Reference Collection. For now though it’s kind of one pedal at a time! The Red Menace, Violet Menace and Civil Unrest have been long-term targets of mine - and I should really hurry up and add them - but there are so many different projects and priorities to juggle that it still hasn’t happened yet!

I find this Electric Warlord somewhat reminiscent of the kind of fuzzes that my good friend Brooks Blackhawk does so well - while those are typically rawer and even more massive sounding. I quickly decided I should totally get this pedal onboard too - courtesy of my good friend Joe Light’s Joe’s Pedals boutique - one of the finest guitar pedal selections available anywhere. I think this particular type is sold out already as of his article going live - but more will surely be in stock soon enough!

Controls - Level, Fuzz, Mids, Tone.

In any case we have 4 very simple and straightforward control knobs - the usual Level and Gain (Fuzz), and then a favourite tone-stack combination of mine - Tone and Mids - where Mids I find increasingly important for fuzzes, and essential on most distortion pedals! I’ve always been troubled why so many guitar pedals just have 2-Band Treble and Bass controls - where the Mid-band frequencies really are essential for that genre of instrument. It’s in the mid-frequency bands that electric guitars are most active!

Unfortunately most pop music - hip hop, electronica etc - tends to accentuate the Bass and the Treble - so on most sound systems out there - speakers and headphones - those EQ’s tend to be set wrong for guitar. In fact at my oldest Brother’s residence this last Christmas - he was showing off his sound system, and I asked him to play some Van Halen - which just sounded awful and hollowed out - as the EQ evidently defaults to max Treble and Bass - and very little in the mid-range. So I’m always delighted to come across pedals which include a MIDS control. In fact I queried Shnobel Tone’s recent ’Mid Driver’ pedal release which comes with Bass and Treble - but no Mids control? Something I find just wholly peculiar for a pedal of that name!

Like I said up top here - this is classified as a Velcro-like fuzz - while for me it renders somewhat smoother than those typically ripping and rasping tones. In fact it sound really very Big Muff adjacent - but with its own character. It doesn’t go as raw and full on as any of those Blackhawk high gain fuzzes - but it’s still pretty majestically full sounding - certainly plenty of volume on tap - but now as much gain or aggression as I thought I was going to get. 

It’s still a great sounding pedal - just not exactly what I thought - based on the written description - I’m very glad to own it - but it doesn’t quite threaten the Blackhawk types which are the masters of that Doomy sound. I still imagine it will be in fairly heavy rotation.

My preferred settings are everything on Max bar the Tone knob dialled back to 9 o’c - that gives me the most oomph and the best texture.

The Electric Warlord is available right now on the Stomp Under Foot Webstore for $195, and via Joe’s Pedals for £195 (when back in stock!).