J
im Dunlop Sr may have left us in
February, but the company he founded
back in 1965 rolls on – and these two
latest stompers provide a snapshot of
the brand’s broad appeal in 2019. One is an
octave fuzz with seven-band EQ created for
Billy Gibbons; the other is a restyled wah
for Jerry Cantrell of Alice In Chains.
Billy’s pedalboard has been known to
feature both a Dunlop Octavio and a Boss
GE-7 Equalizer; the Siete Santos puts
both functions in one enclosure. It’s a large
wedge-shaped box that takes its main
design cues from the all-white Octavio,itself based on the Roger Mayer device
made famous by Jimi Hendrix. The sockets
and knobs are all round the back, with
the footswitch about as high up the top
surface as the added EQ sliders allow. These
offer up to 18dB of cut or boost on each
frequency, and have handy LED markers.
Cantrell wasn’t even born when Dunlop
started out, but his signature Cry Baby has
been around for almost a decade now. This
new version – limited to 500 units – has
the same innards, but with a new ‘industrial
chic’ paint job and, on the treadle, an image
of Jerry’s finest tribal tattoo.IN USE
‘Siete Santos’ means ‘seven saints’ – but
there ain’t nothin’ saintly about this thing.
With fuzz cranked to full and all the EQ
sliders zeroed at their centre notches, it
roars into action with a rasping, riotously
oversaturated blast of uncompromising
noise. This is the fuzz effect as it was before
people learned how to tame it. The upper
octave only really makes itself heard above
the 12th fret, but when it does arrive, it’s
pure Purple Haze.
Minimising the fuzz hardly turns this
sonic gremlin into a house-trained beagle- in fact, it gets even more rough and ratty
at lower gain levels, with chords losing
much of their bottom end and single notes
becoming more prone to spluttering out.
You can even get some clanging ring-
modulation sounds by playing pairs of
notes at non-triad intervals.
There are no surprises with the EQ. Each
of the seven sliders has its own, equally
pronounced influence and we can see two
distinct uses for this part of the pedal:
DUNLOP
SIETE SANTOS OCTAVIO FUZZ
& JERRY CANTRELL CRY BABY WAH
WORDS RICHARD PURVISThese hefty chunks of engineering have been launched in honour of
two very different artists in Billy Gibbons and Jerry Cantrell, but
they both have the same job: to help you rock like a muthaREVIEWS122