Whether you're after a hand in home renovating, a quick path to tinnitus or a surefire way to sour your marriage and estrange your neighbors, this Fender guitar pedal designed by My Bloody Valentine's sonic mastermind Kevin Shields may be able to help.
Shields' band are legendary shoegaze heroes that have left a trail of both aural and structural destruction in their wake, ever since forming back in Dublin in 1983. Recently Shields recalled how various venues actually began to crumble under the pressure of guitar reverb and distortion pumped through a wall of amps all turned up senselessly loud.
“Chunks were falling out of the ceiling," he recalled. "It sounds like an exaggeration, but I’m serious – we were really concerned that eventually some roof was going to fall down.
"It was a matter of time before a serious accident happened.”
Another time, a butcher burst into the venue and chased Shields' sister with a cleaver. His target wasn't her but the power cables, as the 45-minute climactic reverb loops at the end of the band's set were making his nearby shop shake and making him somewhat understandably furious.
Now, you can recreate the aural chaos in the comfort of your own home with the Fender Shields Blender, a multi-fuzz pedal designed in collaboration with the master noise-maker.
In true over-the-top style, the Shields Blender takes a vintage Blender, which first hit studios and stages in the late 1960s, and swaps up the four-knob modesty to create a monster eight-knob, four-footswitch, multi-channel fuzz-laden drone machine.
Time to pick up the Jazzmaster, copy the freaky Shields-style tuning that was responsible his signature 'glide guitar' sound and plug her in to the new Blender. With any luck, you won't even hear the neighbors angrily knocking on the front door or your partner pulling the suitcase off the top shelf in the closet.
However, your loved ones and your crown molding might be safe for a while longer; limited to 700 units, this pedal was swiftly snapped up by fearless fans who had US$499 to part with and some hearing and relationships they were ready to risk losing. You can add your details to US reseller Reverb to be notified of any re-listed pedals.
To hear the cacophony as demonstrated by the man himself, see this video below (but check your headphones volume first).
Source: Reverb
