The EarthQuaker Devices Hizumitas was designed for the one and only Wata
from the legendary experimental band Boris, one of the heaviest bands
ever to come out of Japan. Hizumitas is a faithful recreation of Wata's
go-to distortion pedal, the Elk BM Sustainar. The Elk is a Japanese
variant of the very well-known Triangle BMP. The designers at EQD tried
several vintage BMP's during development, found that each pedal was
wildly different and realized that to truly capture the magic they
needed the original. Wata graciously sent her beloved pedal halfway
around the world, and EQD discovered that it had something special the
others didn't have: heavy saturation with a gritty edge and massive
bottom while maintaining a clear and dynamic tone with enough mids and
top end to cut through any sludge. The studious wizards at EQD have
built all of those characteristics into the Hizumitas! The pedal brings
loads of heavy distortion and smooth sustain and an underlying grit that
sounds like the speakers are on the verge of ripping apart while
delivering amazing and unexpected clarity from such an aggressive
sounding pedal. The Sustain control has a wide range of saturation,
meaning even small changes will significantly affect the overall tone.
Hizumitas responds excellently to all types of pickups and playing
dynamics. Your power chords will sound huge and heavy, while open chords
will be dynamic with fantastic note separation, and single note leads
will come across smooth and powerful, especially with the neck pickup.
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, and treble
frequencies are boosted counterclockwise. The tone control can go from
an aggressive mid-range grind to piercing highs as you turn it
counterclockwise. As you turn it clockwise, the mids become less
present, the highs are tamed, and a humongous, thundering low end comes
to the forefront. The Volume control offers massive output gain with
unity at around 9-10 o'clock and beyond that, prepare to hear and feel
the power of Hizumitas!
A collaboration with Japanese doom legends Boris, the Hizumitas is a recreation of guitarist Wata's favorite Elk Sustainer fuzz. The Big Muff-style circuit is raw and rowdy, with enough gain and distortion to make the earth shake. As much heavy distortion and massive bass response as you desire, with the type of purring sustain you could expect from '70s V1 Triangle Big Muffs.