You’ll be hard pressed to find a current band that sounds more psychedelic than Electric Eye, but the Norwegian group throughout the years has evolved far beyond that genre’s mind altering confines. The band incorporates spacey sounds and fuzzy drones paired against a slick classic rock aesthetic. With those thick, textured, DELICIOUS sounds, how could we resist the temptation to ask them to tell us about the gear they used behind the scenes? Guitarist Øystein Braut was kind enough to give us the rundown on his impressively loaded, and yet compact board. – Olivia Sisinni
Here’s my board, it goes like this:
Z.Vex Fuzz Factory -> TC electronic Poly tune -> Fulltone GT-500 -> Xotic Wah -> Hudson Electronics Buzzard -> Homemade Octavia-type fuzz -> Voodoo Lab Tremolo -> MXR Phase 100 -> TC Electronics Ditto looper -> Xotic EP-boost -> Catalinbread Echorec -> EHX Holy Grail Nano
I like to use boosts more than overdrive pedals as it makes it easier to play in a more dynamic way. The boosts react really well to the dynamics of my performance so I really have a lot control over the tone with my bare hands. The Fulltone GT-500 has a great boost and the Xotic EP-boost is turned on all the time. It makes all the other pedals sound better too–in my ears at least.
When I want to go next level I hit one of the fuzz-boxes. I like the Hudson Buzzard a=because it’s really thick and grumpy, and you can change it a lot just using the guitar’s tone knob. Same with the Octavia-type fuzz I put together myself. It can make some real hairy sounds, almost ring-mod-ish, especially if you turn down the tone control. Check out the mid part of “Mercury Rise” for example.
Roland AF-100 Bee Baa
I also used a vintage Roland A-F100 Bee-Baa a lot. I like it because it has a boost and a wild and heavy dark fuzz in the same box. It’s old and it breaks all the time so I had my buddy make a copy for me. (Check out Norwegian made Fjordfuzz, he’s great, and his pedals sound great and looks great too!). It’s currently not on the board because he’s making some adjustments to it, but it will be as soon as he’s done. Check it out on the song “Silent By the River” off our last album for some BeeBaa-action, plugged directly into the board. If you want to make the fuzz really wild and wasp-like, that’s the way to go!
Catlinbread Echorec
I also love the phaser. That is an old MXR 100 from the late 70s. I use it for classic phaser sounds, but if you turn it all the way up you get really close to a leslie-type sound. Really cool! Goes really well together with the different fuzzes for the spaced out sounds. For delays, I use the Catalinbread Echorec, at least live. Sometimes in the studio, I also use my Roland Space-Echo, but it’s too heavy and fragile to carry around. I like the Echorec because it adds a cool vibey something to the tone. I choose not to have it true bypass and there’s a gain in there too so you get a little extra boost from it too, even when it’s turned off. Boost-o-rama haha… It also sounds great on vocals and drums etc. For the leslie/phaser + Echorec effects you can hear them on the tune “All of This Has Happened Before And Will Happen Again.”
The rest is pretty basic. The trem from VoodooLab has a volume control I like, so you can boost the signal and make it really aggressive. The looper is for recording feedbacks for jam-parts or in between songs. The EHX Holy Grail has been with me for ages and sounds cool and doesn’t take too much space on the board.
All of these pedals goes into either a Ceriatone “Marshall Plexi”-type 50w bass amp with a Marshall 4×12 HW cab, a Fender 68 custom Deluxe reverb or preferably both.
Oh and check out our latest single!
