Tone Report Weekly Issue 157 | Page 59

and the Bias off, the Your Mom was bright and sharp, emphasizing the mids and highs perhaps a little bit too much for my taste. I found that I had to drop the overall level and roll back the Input to find a tone that satisfied my fuzzy needs, even after switching from the bridge to the neck pickup. Fiddling with the Input setting helped greatly, all owing me to find a comfortable base from which to explore the sounds on offer from the Fuzz and Bias controls. That said, the lower-output pickups quickly allowed the biasing to overpower it, making the last half of its range less useful. This was not the case with my Stratocaster, a hard tail with a stacked, coiltapped humbucker in the bridge and Alnico pickups in the neck and middle. The Your Mom just loved every combination I tried; where it was a bit bright and raw with my LP, it was lively and clear with my Strat, and every twist of the Bias produced fuzz that was usable and musical. My favorite setting had the Bias just a few ticks above off, the Level at 9 or 10 o’clock, and the Fuzz and Inputs knobs dimed, creating a fuzz-soaked but creamy and compressed tone, reminding me of a cranked tube amplifier. The dynamic range of the pedal shrunk massively as well, but who cares? The same thing happens with the amp, and I was blown away with how great it sounded, even at a reasonable volume. WHAT WE LIKE The number of tones available are legion. The natural compression when cranked is gorgeous. CONCERNS More responsive to single coil or hotter pickups. Lack of a tone control means those looking for a darker sound might be disappointed. Yellowcake’s Your Mom fuzz is exactly what the name implies, an OD-Fuzz that gleefully thumbs it nose at the other pedals on the playground. It’s snide and snotty but capable of dialing in a huge range of fuzz while maintaining that character. The lack of a tone control may not appeal to the doomier among us, but for punks as well as desert, garage, and other hard rockers, it might be an fantastic choice. ToneReport.com 59