New Gear Review: Ripped Speaker by Electro-Harmonix
“Whether you’re after a slight crackle reminiscent of small tube-like breakup, or a full-on sear, this pedal is marketed to cover it all.”
Maybe it’s just me and my love for studio tricks, but when I hear a sound that’s kind of busted on a recording, it draws me in.
The studio rat in me wants to know more about what went into creating it. The artistic side of me is entranced by mangled sounds and heavy energy, and I become viscerally excited when something comes across borderline brash, obnoxious, or unapologetic.
For context, these are the words of a person who has gotten tones by running an acoustic guitar through a half-fried tube amp (cranked) and pulling the DI signal before even running it into a cabinet. That was fun.
And so, the Ripped Speaker pedal by Long Island City-based trendsetters Electro-Harmonix seemed like the perfect match for someone like me. I waited in high anticipation for several months for a unit to free up, and when it finally did, I dug right in. Let’s see just how gnarly it can get.
Features
“Fuzz” is the recurring word, no matter where you look to research this pedal. EHX claims that the Ripped Speaker has old school roots, and stays true to the way that early distorted guitars and basses sounded. Whether you’re after a slight crackle reminiscent of small tube-like breakup, or a full-on sear, this pedal is marketed to cover it all.
A fun historical anecdote is provided early on in the Ripped Speaker’s user manual, which shines light on the authenticity of what inspired Electro-Harmonix to create this pedal:
“The story of intentionally damaging amplifiers to achieve desirable new tones originates from an incident which occurred in the early 1950s to guitarist/singer Ike Turner. While unloading gear before a show, Turner’s band dropped one of their amps from the tour van onto the sidewalk and in doing so, perforated the speaker. They didn’t realize what had occurred until plugging in to play, but ultimately Turner decided he liked the sound, so the amp was later used in recording sessions.”
And so with that as inspiration, the design of the Ripped Speaker pedal is (and should be) quite simple: a true bypass, mono analog circuit with four simple controls for Volume, Tone, Rip, and Fuzz. The compact 4.5 x 2.75 inch footprint enables it to fit onto your pedalboard with ease.
As for what’s happening under the hood, the Volume and Tone knobs are much as you’d expect: an output trim, and a tilt-shift type EQ, respectively. More counter-clockwise on the Tone knob will provide a thicker tone with less highs; turn clockwise for the opposite. When you tweak the Fuzz knob, you’re adjusting the degree of input gain that you’re sending into the fuzz circuit. The Rip knob is in actuality a bias control which provides varying degrees of clipping at both the top and bottom ends of the waveform. The harder you push the Rip circuit, the more choked or gated your signal will become.
I was excited to throw some signal at the Ripped Speaker, because in reality, that’s exactly what I’ve done with busted cabinets and heads in the studio for years. Who says broken is bad?
In Use
Upon first plugging a guitar into the Ripped Speaker, my initial impression was that this pedal does what it’s marketed to do, and holds up to its namesake. Although it does provide an obvious sense of “gain”, it’s not quite what you would get from a distortion or overdrive pedal. The sound, through the Ripped Speaker, is more oddly mangled than it is driven.
Before experimenting with the two more “creative” controls on the pedal (Fuzz and Rip), I used the Tone knob to shape the overall balance and the Volume knob to trim my output. Fully counter-clockwise on the Tone knob will provide a sound that is probably darker than you’d need, with what sounds like a pretty healthy EQ boost somewhere low enough to conflict with a kick drum—so I may advise against going fully in this direction.
However, you don’t need to turn the Tone control too far clockwise before you’re in super well-rounded sonic territory. With the Tone knob even all the way clockwise, your sound is thin but not brittle, and totally usable, even when maxed out! In fact, in my opinion, you can’t really dial in too much high end with this pedal, unless the Tone and the Fuzz controls are both really cranked at the same time. The further clockwise you go with Fuzz, a nice midrange richness emerges instead of a shrillness from the top end.
The more I got to experimenting with the Rip and Fuzz controls, I realized how vintage this pedal can really sound—another testament to EHX’s marketing on this unit. It truly and actually does sound like a busted speaker. The more clockwise you go with the Rip knob (let’s remember this is a bias control) the less like an actual ripped speaker the pedal sounds, though this gated-type effect can be cool to implement creatively.
I was curious to see how bass would react to the tilt EQ circuit in the Tone Control, and whoa, first impressions on bass were awesome. There’s something about the overtones when putting bass through the Ripped Speaker that almost sounds synth-like, which is a bit surprising here, but not necessarily off-putting, nor a total curveball considering EHX’s popular synth emulation offerings of years past.
I found the Rip control to be most useful between roughly 9 o’clock and 2 o’clock. Anything too far clockwise and the gate barely lets anything through; anything too far in the opposite direction almost reacts like an envelope filter or a compressor with a slow attack—kind of cool for effect, though! I wouldn’t consider this setting totally off-limits if the application was right.
Even with the Fuzz control turned totally down, you still won’t ever be dealing with a totally clean signal with the Ripped Speaker. There is a lot of control over brightness and dullness via the Fuzz knob alone, and there were actually some really interesting tones across both guitar and bass that I was able to call up by maxing out the Tone knob (thinning the sound), while keeping Fuzz all the way counter-clockwise (conversely dulling the sound); the result was unique, gnarly, and very usable. Guitars simply sounded busted, yet synth-like overtones pervaded the use of this pedal with bass (especially in the low register) all the way through.
To Be Critical
Quite honestly, I can’t say I’d change anything about the Ripped Speaker. It takes up minimal real estate on your pedalboard, is priced totally reasonably at $110.60, and performs the task it claims to do with flying colors. But, most importantly, this pedal’s sonic footprint is unique.
Even though it’s marketed as a “fuzz pedal”, the Ripped Speaker still sits in a different category to me and my ears. Yes, its quality can be reduced to the word “fuzzy”, but its sound is reminiscent of the busted tube amp referenced at the beginning of this review, which is just plain different, interesting, angular—whatever you want to call it; it’s broken, and it’s not your normal tone.
Summing it Up
If you’re looking for a guitar or bass sound that is off-center, kind of grimy, and harkens back accurately to the overblown tones of yesteryear, look no further than Electro-Harmonix’ Ripped Speaker. It’s inspired by a real-life load-in mishap which was later found useful creatively in the studio, and rightfully so.
And the Ripped Speaker need not only be used in heavy applications. Ike Turner was sure not a rock or metal artist, and you can find tones reminiscent of what this pedal produces in everything from late psychedelic Beatles to modern pop. A strong nod to EHX here for continuing to be at the forefront of creative pedal design.
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