The Hizumitas was designed for the one and only guitar sorceress, Wata, from the legendary band, Boris! We could not be more excited to have the honor of working with such an iconic legend known for her crushing riffs and mind-melting leads. The Hizumitas is a faithful sonic recreation of her go-to distortion which has been a staple of her tone for many years: the Elk BM Sustainar.
1. Volume: Adjusts the output volume. Unity is around 9-10 o’clock.
2. Sustain: More distortion and sustain clockwise; less counterclockwise.
3. Tone: Boost bass frequencies clockwise and boost highs counterclockwise. This control has a massive effect on the character of the Hizumitas.
The Tone control is atypical for this type of distortion and can drastically change the distortion’s character in conjunction with the Sustain setting. Bass frequencies are boosted clockwise while treble frequencies are boosted when turned counterclockwise. The treble side can go from piercing highs to an aggressive mid-range grind. As the Tone is turned clockwise, the mids become less present, highs are tamed, and a massive, thundering low-end comes to the forefront.
As you might expect, there is plenty of output gain on tap, so be careful. Unity is around 9-10 o’clock and everything above that is set to destroy.
The Elk Sustainar is a Japanese variant of the more well-known “Triangle” BMP. During development, we used several vintage models of the BMP, as well as a few different versions of the Elk, and quickly realized all of them were wildly different. The only way we were going to truly capture the magic was to get our hands on her original pedal. Wata was kind enough to send her beloved pedal halfway across the world so we could see what made it tick. Right away, we realized it had something special that none of the others had - heavy saturation with a gritty edge and a massive bottom while still maintaining a clear and dynamic tone with enough mids and top end to cut through the sludge. We set out to faithfully recreate all these characteristics in the Hizumitas!
This device uses relay-based true bypass switching; it requires power to pass signal.
This device takes a standard 9 volt DC power supply with a 2.1mm negative center barrel. We always recommend pedal-specific, transformer-isolated wall-wart power supplies or multiple isolated-output supplies. Pedals will make extra noise if there is ripple or unclean power. Switching-type power supplies, daisy chains and non-pedal specific power supplies do not filter dirty power as well and let through unwanted noise. DO NOT RUN AT HIGHER VOLTAGES!
