The following is dedicated to Mike Matthews of EHX for the inspiration, attitude and wonderful creations he’s given the world.
The only good walls are walls of sound.
The older I get, the harder it gets to pinpoint the origins of my lifelong love for distortion. I can think of a million moments - the accidental discovery of tape saturation from when you turned up the level too high while recording a mixtape, the harsh warmth of the speakers of an Akai reel to reel. The intros to “Master of Puppets”, “Wish” and “School”. The first time listening to Jimi Hendrix. Sub-slices of song fragments, where the tone more than the instrumentation made my ears prick up and stand on end.
My love for distortion pedals, however, did not begin with the fan favourite Fuzz Face. While easy to build, it left me a bit cold. The Tone Bender MK 2 spoke to me a bit more. For me, however, the undisputed G.O.A.T only emerged when I abandoned germanium altogether and gave in to the mighty Big Muff Pi circuit.
The first (one-off) Animal Factory builds were tweaked Big Muff variants, although there was no intent to do a Big Muff clone under the AFA brand – till I felt it was time, or it was different enough from the original. 15 years since, the time has come.
It should come as no surprise that I love shoegaze, experimental and alternative rock, and the huge wall of fuzz was the driving factor behind our first product (Chemical Burn, a modified, irreverent Shin-Ei Superfuzz FY-6 variant). It had been a dream to marry these two legendary circuits somehow, with the goal of building fuzz-drenched, phasey, undulating nightmarish sonic landscapes.
Gaze deep into the Dirty Mirror. Beware – the mirror will gaze back.
The Dirty Mirror takes these two behemoths of sonic perversion and adds an extra layer of nasty – using the core circuit of our Coma Reactor Eurorack module.
This three footswitch, 15 knob pedal looks complicated – but it’s not:
-
The BURN Channel (left side) is based on our Chemical Burn circuit.
-
The CHURN channel (right side) is based on a heavily modded Big Muff Pi.
-
Before the fuzz circuits, there is a short delay circuit.
-
Both the fuzz circuits can switch between the input sound, 100% wet delayed sound or a blend of wet and dry.
-
The fuzz circuits are then mixed in parallel into a high-headroom output section.
-
For added sickness, the delay time can be modified by an envelope follower or LFO.
-
Choose your filthy reflection – from straight dual parallel fuzz textures, to seasick vibrato to long slow quasi-chorus phasey apocalyptica.
Details and availability
Built to the same standard as the Ozymandias and Godeater+ pedals, the Dirty Mirror circuit is finalized and in the pre-production stage. The images are of a prototype and do not show the final artwork.
We will likely begin production in the end of May. It is likely to be available end June – mid July 2025 from our store, worldwide retailers and distributors. We estimate pricing to be in the range of €360-€380.
We hope you like this love letter to distortion, shoegaze and harsh noise as much as we do – it just took us 15 years to write.