FUZZLORD DRONEMASTER Distortion Pedal Review
If you’re reading this, there’s a good chance you've heard of Fuzzlord, a youtube channel and pedal company. Channel owner Jason is one of few content creators to have seized upon the doom/stoner niche to create high-quality doom/stoner videos, explainers, and pedal reviews. Jason also has a degree in electrical engineering and has begun to produce handmade pedals that compete seriously with much larger, better-established pedal producers.
I’ve previously held back on buying Fuzzlord products or similar pedals from other creators like Does it Doom? The devices all look and sound great, but I haven’t seen many with sounds that I couldn't cobble together from other, cheaper pedals. These are boutique shops, so it would be unrealistic to expect crazy deals, but I’m rather poor and can’t afford to experiment too much.
Lately, though, I haven’t been able to help myself. When I saw a demo for Fuzzlord’s Dronemaster, I found the sound that I’d been missing since I’d rebuilt my pedalboard.
A song that relies on the dronemaster throughout:
Functions and Impressions
The Dronemaster is based on the same circuit as the legendary RAT series, but it comes with much better clipping options that make it suitable for sludgier, darker music. Because its filter effect works from the high end down, the pedal favors low tunings and power chords. It’s capable of giving your clean cabinet a high-quality, standard kind of distortion, a lingering “drone” sound, or a doomy lead tone. At noon gain levels and low clipping, mine sounds comparable to crunchy orange distortions. Of course, less conservative settings are where this pedal really shines.
The settings are as follows:
Standard level dial
Top-end filter dial
Gain dial
Boost/scoop switch
LED/silicon switch
The Dronemaster can sound quiet or boosted, depending on how you combine your setup with the pedal’s level settings. The filter dial lets you choose how much crunchy, high-end noise you want to include in your signal. Gain is straightforward, and the LED/silicon switch lets you switch between clipping methods. I’m not what the technical difference is between LED and silicon modes, but they’re distinctly different, and one sounds a bit more organic and “glitchy” than the other.
Update: 1 Year Later
So it’s a year later. I have a few more gray hairs and so does my dog. But I’ve also recorded a bunch of music. I put out an album on a tight budget and it did very well on youtube and is picking up on Spotify. All of this is thanks to the Dronemaster, which I used on almost every track.
In the year I’ve had to mess around, I’ve noticed a few subtleties that I’ll point out there:
Stacking
Since the pedal is based on a distortion rather than a fuzz circuit, it doesn’t turn every other pedal into unusable mush. It does great for doom when stacked with an SF300 or Hyperfuzz, and I’m sure it works well with other fuzz pedals.
With the gain cranked, though, it’s tough to get much out of your other pedals. The max distortion is pretty muddy, and this sounds great by itself, but makes most reverbs sound undiscernible, rendering them pointless. Phasers and vibes work much better, though I still prefer to keep the gain under 3 o’clock for lead parts.
Both the LED and Silicon settings sound fine with other effects. But I would avoid the scooped mode, as it tends to wash out a mix.
Direct Input
Naked direct input is almost always screechy and terrible, so if you plan to plug your Dronemaster directly into a DAW or video editor, don’t expect it to sound like it does through your amp.
That being said, I’m impressed with how well mine has done through cab simulators and software like Amplitube. This may indicate as much about the simulators as the device, but when you can hear granular details through headphones, things still sound great.
If you have neighbors or lack space for heavy equipment, rest assured that you can run your FUZZLORD stuff digitally and do just fine.
Volume
Just like a RAT, the Dronemaster has a volume knob, which helps balance with the other pedals you have on your board. This is nice, but the LED/Silicon switch does change your volume somewhat. You’ll want to consider this before making changes on the fly, though you likely won’t want to bend over and flip such a tiny and inconsequential switch during a live performance anyway.
I’ve had one serious issue with volume, and it is an odd, very specific one. Through cheap music cables, the Dronemaster seems to short the volume of my microvibe, so the resulting output is far lower than either device individually. I don’t have a library of other effects to try to replicate this with, but none of the seven or so on my board induce the same problem.
When I plug new cables in, the issue goes away, but it always comes back, and it only ever happens when my distortion is upstream of my vibe. Mildly annoying, since the two effects make a great combo for psych solos and trippy parts. But not a dealbreaker.
Conclusion
This is probably the easiest review I’ve ever done, as I depend on this seemingly magical device almost daily. If you like stoner/doom music and found these demos and others to be intriguing, buy the pedal. The only thing I’ve ever heard that seems able to compare is the Earthquaker Life pedal, which is quite a bit more expensive and far more tailored to Sun 0))) types.
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