amukaT Gadgets’ Tweaker V.2

For NYC’s amukaT Gadgets’ latest stompbox, the name says it all: Tweaker. This is a revamp of the original Tweaker that came out two years ago, now with sturdier metal footswitches (you’ll understand why momentarily), a horizontal layout, and a redesign of the circuit.

Starting with the basics, the Tweaker has Fuzz and Volume knobs allowing the pedal to serve as a standard Fuzz or boost pedal. From there, it gets weird in a hurry. The third knob is a feedback control which dials up or down the degree of feedback that feeds the pedal’s oscillation mechanism. You can either control the feedback/oscillation via the Feedback on/off switch and the volume knobs on the guitar, or better yet with the “Momentary Switch”, where you can actively use the footswitch as an oscillation control (hence the reason they needed the more durable metal, for all the beatings the button takes).

A lot of the sounds coming out in the demo videos sound a lot more like ring mods and noise gates than fuzz, and when you flip the switch from treble to bass, the register drops into deep dark fat tones. The name Tweaker really fits, because it’s impossible to fully describe in writing what this pedal can do. According to amukaT, depending on the settings, you can get fuzz, infinite sustain, noise, octave up/down, and ring mods – and that’s before you try combining it with other pedals. In other words, you really just need to get in there and tweak it to find out about all the idiosyncrasies this clever stompbox can create. – Ryan Dembinsky