Truth be told, we were moments away from ordering a Red Ryder Distortion when Nick Diener dropped a hint that he’d soon be releasing not just one, but possibly two new effects pedals. If you’ve been reading the blog recently, you’ll probably remember our recent conversation with the Oneder Effects maestro about his surprise foray into the world of guitars – check it out here if you need a refresher. Ultimately, with two beloved boost/overdrive pedals under their belt (if not more), it would have made sense for the company to expand outwards past the lands of distortion, especially in the recent context of building new instruments altogether.
But Oneder Effects have the community doing a triple take with another highly ubiquitous pedal that breathes new life into a concept that many of us in the instrumental scene overlook: fuzz. On its surface, the Onederwall is an unassuming, lovely little box. Once retrieved from its Vans inspired packaging, you can’t help but notice the artfully frayed floral pattern and clever wallpaper design courtesy of Jordan Clayton at Pinebox Customs. It really is very pretty – and very deceptive.
Looking at it, the uninformed might find themselves thinking, ‘Hmmm… could this this one of those transparent overdrives our dads have been talking about? Does it Klon?’ Absolutely not. The Onederwall is a 2-channel fuzz/distortion unit from Valhalla, and in the words of the great Rich Fulcher, it is going to turn you into a mess machine. Trust us. We’ve been playing this thing for weeks.
While easy to dress up, and even easier to fetishize, fuzz can prove an elusive concept for musicians that don’t actively pay tribute to stoner metal and sludge. In genres like those, the best designed transistors impart the sound of roaring, unnaturally sustained flamethrowers for every note, and you would think everyone would want a piece of the glory – but it’s a little much for some, and in the end, it makes sense. With the wrong gain structure, highly orchestrated sounds like that of CHON, Invalids, or Save Us from The Archon would risk losing a ton of clarity in general once their fundamental clean tones become enveloped in the chaos: standard techniques like finger-style and legato phrasing becoming ‘boxy’ and filtered out with offensive levels of honk.
That being said, Oneder Effects have always had a focus on ubiquity, and they’ve delivered since their inception. We remember the first time we came across the demo for the Red Ryder and being blown away by its authentically massive amp feel. We really wanted that Red Ryder, and to be honest we were a bit nervous to try something fuzzy and unknown. However, the results spoke for themselves, or rather, shouted for themselves like the Dragonborn.
But first, do you wanna hear it in a context that makes sense for the blog? Good – let’s see what we can do with some CHON-inspired noodles, just to test out theories above so far.
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We used with a super light base tone to emulate their Matchless / DI Fractal setups, starting with some Seymour Duncan Duckbuckers going through the Neural DSP: Archetype Abasi plugin’s clean blend to get that spank-y, springy tone. Even in this precarious context, the Onederwall keeps things focused, but uniquely flared – one thing we absolutely love most about it on either channel is the way it handles lower frequencies. Even on Channel 2, the 200 HZ range gets a generous filtering that massively crisps the gain when you want it to, especially with settings past past noon, but still stays in character at lower settings. Playing thorough traditionally bright humbuckers like the Seymour Duncan JB and Dimarzio D-Activator, we actually found a lot of vintage flavored, low-gain magic when rolling the guitar volume back in the bridge and middle positions. Playing through similar settings using single coils and the gain cranked on the Onederwall, you’ll be setting Strats on fire and risking public indecency charges at the local pop festivals in no time.
Using the buffer switch on the top right to change between silicon or op-amp is an intuitive way to ‘tune’ your guitar to the pedal if you’re not sure how to integrate fuzz into your existing palette. The differences between the two can be subtle, but stand out when it comes to things like pick attack, palm muting, and the presence of certain harmonics. If you like expansive headroom and shiny top end, the op-amp is perfect for this, but if you need to darken things because you already have distortion/drive coming from somewhere else, or simply want something a little more vintage sounding, the silicon/LED side might be more your flavor.
There’s an additional toggle on this channel as well that’s an actual boost, so the mechanics as described above are very similar, but this one is a little more obvious. In the upper position, you have the original circuit for the Oneder Drive, which for many is more than enough, and keeps the froth at bay while blurring the lines between the overdrive and fuzz. In the demo below, we went for more of a Covet-style setup, using a Logic Pro X Vox emulator and a special 2×12 Pro cab from the Get Good Drums: Zilla Cab collection. To make sure we started out with enough grit, because we wanted to keep the processing minimal, we just used the Zilla Cab UI to inject a bit of gain into the input. This helped get a clean tone that feels like it can capture the multifarious dynamics of Yvette Young’s playing style, which is important not just because of the nature of the demo, but because the Onederwall is so varied in it’s offerings, that you shouldn’t limit yourself to just one tone to stack it with.
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Next in the versatility department, for expanded control over sustain, attack, a smidgen more gain, you can toggle a boost above the tone control. Throwing this on can be a fun one when it comes to stacking with an amp’s natural overdrive – we tested out the boost in front of already chug-friendly EVH 5150, and it was like throwing the perfect amount of grease on the fire, improving an already legendary tone. You can tell we’re really good at fires.
Regardless, it’s a style of boost that can be utilized in low gain settings as well if you find that your finger style or tapping needs some sustain. You can still introduce a fair amount of gain into the signal before it becomes truly fuzzy, making for levels of ubiquity we haven’t seen since the Swollen Pickle. Sure, there have been gnarlier fuzz pedals since then, but MXR’s famously friendly fuzz filled in a lot of the gaps others couldn’t with its prescient filtering abilities. This allowed players to easily mold it to existing pedalboards, and the Onederwall achieves this at the very least, ensuring itself a place on the board of anyone looking to replace any drained/dilapidated fuzz pickles.
Of course, you’ve probably noticed we started with Channel 2 – we did this because it’s the softer one. The nicer one. The one that goes out of its way to play nice with whatever gear you’re working with so far.
Channel 1 is something else entirely. An expanded take on Diener’s celebrated version of the Ram’s Head muff, this remorseless killer of a channel can do 1990’s nastiness like Mudhoney, Smashing Pumpkins, and Quicksand, as well as bring you saturated Swedish metal tones a la In Flames, Soilwork, and At the Gates when prompted. Given the fact that we can bypass one channel at a time, and even change flow from CH 1 into CH 2 and vice versa, this is all we’d really say we needed from the heavier of two channels in a 2-in-1 fuzz.
But this is where the Onederwall’s first channel actually begins – there’s an ungodly amount of gain available, divided into three stages: Stage I is a classic mid-scoop that helps stays consistent and cutting through a mix, not unlike the best of the classic Big Muffs you can find in the used cabinet of Guitar Centers across the nation.
We figured we’d know they got it right if it also gives off that incredibly satisfying gurgle to bass tones.
Spoiler Alert: It absolutely does. Check out this vaguely Faraquet-inspired chunker below to hear some girth sustain – keep in mind, we did this on Stage I. Stages II and III are louder, scarier, and potentially even better sounding, and maybe we’ll do some more on that for social media, but we wanted to keep it practical.
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Stage II is hairier indeed, introducing more gain at both ends of the spectrum like a boost within a boost. For many, this is where the most favorable metallic chugs can be found, and rest assured, from what we can tell, it’s a straight shot to devil music with its doom-y, mournful sustain whether played through a 4×12 stack with vintage Greenbacks, a 1×12 tweed combo, or the best digital modelers money can buy.
Then there is Stage III, essentially weaponized agent of bass-heavy, harmonic-hording destruction. Maybe you’ve seen Speilburg’s version of classic science fiction tale War of the Worlds – you know, the one where the alien’s laser beams zap townsfolk into dust, leaving only the faintest remnants of their clothes. We assume that was the inspiration – we didn’t blow any speakers or phase out of existence, but we did violently shake the glass of the local Music and Arts when trying it through bass amps like the Acoustic B-100 and Fender Rumble 25. It moves air like an industrial vent, and we gave our own walls a decent shake with a couple of Eris 3.5 near field monitors, which are relatively tiny in the grand scheme of things. In either setting, we were provided beautiful, overtone-rich overkill ready to be applied to any scenario – Stage III starts at 11 and aims for beyond, making for a range that’s hard to compete with. Especially if you’re a wall.
The fact that all of these toggles, knobs, and switches are each so usable deserves massive praise in and of itself – for whatever reasons, there are a lot of fuzz with a similar amount of switches, but most result in set-and-forget preferences. This can be great, but they can also feel like a certain amount of money being wasted or like you’re not getting all that you could out of your pedal because you might not get back to ‘the good sound.’ Some companies dress this up with capabilities like super smooth flexi-switching or the ability to store and recall presets, but sometimes these ideas cover up the fact that there’s not actually much there to explore. Thankfully, this is far from the case with Oneder Effects’ Onederwall, which we tinker with every chance we get, and constantly find new settings for. It’s beautifully paired with American-style gain structure like the ones you get from a 5150 or Mesa Boogie Triple Rectifier. There’s certainly a range where there is too much gain, but if you treat the Onederwall as a boost or EQ for already distorted channels, you’ll find various harmonic sweet spots that liven things up in ways you might have never considered.
It’s common practice to enhance the overall EQ of hot, high-output amps with a Tube Screamer 808-style pedal, and while wouldn’t say you should replace the 808 with a Onederwall, we would highly recommend putting one between the Onederwall and the amp. When we paired it with a J. Rockett Archer, we found ourselves playing nonstop for a good three to four hours, tweaking settings at the slowest imaginable pace just to see what would happen… and we haven’t really stopped since. We took the Archer out of the equation for the last clip, which is based loosely on the main Muscle Beach Petting Zoo riff from “Beaches.” We also went with one of our favorite modelers ever, the Kazrog Ampcraft 1992. It’s fantastic if you’re looking for that famous block-lettered metallic chunk, but what makes it great for testing pedals is the modeler’s massively improved clean channel. It has tons of ‘headroom,’ or room for perceived dynamics. It’s subtle, but you can hear the Onederwall lightly compressing things once engaged, coming in handy for tightening up the rhythm section and those ridiculous two-handed tapping leads.
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All in all, it’s hard to overstate the sheer range of this thing’s personality, and despite a huge array of options, it’s very easy to use. There are no complex menus to wade through, and experimenting with its settings consistently reveals with new sweet spots – in the weeks we’ve been testing it, we never ran into the urgent feeling that we needed to get back to a particular parameter. With all its style and usability, it’s going to stay on people’s radars for years to come whether they’re fuzz fiends or not. And if that’s the case, then maybe the Oneder Effects Onederwall is going to be the one to save fuzz after all.
[We finally did it – hope you enjoyed our first ever Not Another Fecking Gear Review! P.S. This was 100% non-sponsored, we saw the thing, wanted it bad, and figured this was the perfect time. Besides, we’ve covered a lot of gear over the years, with articles like Narrative History of the Telecaster, How to Collect Pedals if You’re And So I Watch You From Afar and Tera Melos, Math and Machines: The Devices of Math Rock, and more, all of which you can see under the a consolidated Gear tab here. We had a hell of a lot of fun, and here’s hoping it’s the first of many more to come. Check out more from Oneder Effects at their website here, and buy us a coffee because we’re tired as heck over here. But hey – we really nailed that headline didn’t we?]