My Favorite Way Huge Pedals

In this article, I'm going to show you my absolute favorite Way Huge pedals ever made. They're awesome. They're spectacular. And they will brighten up what might otherwise be a drab, boring day. Think of these pedals as the spoonful of sugar that helps the medicine go down.

Yeah, that metaphor got away from me there at the end, but I think you get my meaning. Way Huge Pedals are fantastic, and I’m going to prove that to you.

Let’s dive right in.

The Overrated Special

The very first Way Huge pedal on this list is an overdrive, and not just any overdrive. It's my favorite Way Huge overdrive pedal, and that's a big statement because Way Huge has a lot of great circuits. I think Jeorge is a master of dirt sounds. Of course, I’m talking about the Overrated Special**. But this is not just an overdrive. It's an overrated overdrive that is special. Google a photo of this thing really quickly. Look at the font. Look at the knobs. It’s beautiful.

**Self-deprecating humor is kind of a staple with pedal builders. See my “JHS Pedals Suck” t-shirt for further proof.

This pedal has a certain striking resemblance to a very prestigious amp maker. I'm not going to say who it is, but it might be a company that rhymes with ‘Bumble Crampfiliation’. There’s also two versions of this pedal: big and small. I have both, because sometimes you need to be able to have fun as an adult, and my fun outlet is holding up the bigger pedal in front of the smaller pedal and saying, “Big pedal eclipse.” Don’t knock it ‘till you try it. It’s very soothing.

You just need to know that the Overrated Special is based around the Green Rhino. It's a modified version, which is funny because the Green Rhino is already a modified Tube Screamer. So, now we're double modified, which is extra overrated and special? Modification inception.

It has a 500 Hertz knob, which I like because I use the Klon Centaur as a high gain overdrive and it has this honky mid range thing I love with single coils. I can achieve a similar sound with the Overrated Special, but still retain some flavor of the old original tube screamer. That’s what you call a win-win.

Coincidentally, if you go back and watch the JHS episode that this article is based on, you’re going to see me play the Aqua Puss analog delay (the most famous Way Huge pedal of all time) on every jam session. I didn’t touch it the entire time. I just left it on and played it on every riff with the same setting, because you don't always need to mess with delay pedals. You can leave them on. Just let it be.

The Blue Hippo

Next up on the list is the Blue Hippo MK-2 analog chorus. There is a MK-1, but the MK-2 is more accessible. This pedal is an awesome and fantastic analog chorus vibrato.

Now my favorite sound on this is the switch-up on the vibrato mode that removes all the clean signal. Then when you go down into the chorus mode, you're adding in clean. That's the basic difference between vibrato and chorus. This is awesome because (like I've said many times on the show) I'm a huge fan of leaving vibrato pedals on all the time and never turning them off, but just barely having it move as a 3D effect. I use UniVibe that way and a lot of other chorus pedals, but the Blue Hippo is one of my favorites, probably in the top five of any vibrato pedal in my collection.**

**If you haven’t seen my insane pedal collection, just picture that huge library from Beauty and the Beast, but with pedals instead of books, and you’ve got the right idea.

And just to clear the air: the Blue Hippo is not based on a BOSS CE-2, people. I see people saying this all the time. It's not based on it. The Blue Rhino is a totally different circuit.

The Red Llama

This next one is possibly the other most famous Way Huge pedal ever. It's a big deal. A way huge deal, if you will. I’m talking about the Red Llama. I have the 25th anniversary overdrive, basically a version two reissue of the original. Now, it's super classic. When a guy like Tom Petty pretty much only uses this pedal, you know it's good.

Like I mentioned, there are two versions of this: 1.) You have the original vintage unit that came out in the ’90s. It costs roughly 1.2 bajillion dollars now, has two knobs, and is a bit more simple than the reissue. 2.) You have the reissued 25th Anniversary version which came out a few years ago, which is more normally priced and has three knobs, more options, and a smaller enclosure.

I know that Jeorge Tripps is an enigmatic dude, but no one would blame you for asking, “Where did the name ‘red llama’ even come from?” Short answer: Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Yup. It’s a cult movie reference. According to the movie credits, Monty Python and the Holy Grail was directed by 40 specially trained Ecuadorian mountain llamas, six Venezuelan red llamas, 142 Mexican whooping llamas, and a ton of other llamas.

Your guess is as good as mine for why Jeorge chose to single out the red llamas. Maybe “Ecuadorian Mountain Llamas” wouldn’t fit on the enclosure?

Havalina Germanium Fuzz

Way Huge created a truly magical fuzz that I adore: the Havalina germanium fuzz. This is Jeorge Tripps’ take on the 3 knob ColorSound Tonebender germanium fuzz. Jeorge is great with fuzzes, of course, and the use of germanium transistors, and he did a great job here capturing the classic ColorSound tone from the ’70s. It's a big, burly, piggish tone, and I really love it.

It's a great pedal and the name's fun. First, it's the name of a Pixies song. Then, there's a band from California that named their band after the name of the Pixies song. So, a pedal named after a band named after a song that I’m fairly sure is named after a kind of pig. A breed of pig, if that’s a thing?

I just googled it. Yep, that is definitely a thing.

Ringworm Ring Modulator

Next up is the most underrated and underappreciated Way Huge pedal ever made. That makes me super sad. Just thinking about it right now, I'm spiraling into a world of depression, thinking about how nobody gave this pedal any love. Today, I want to change that.

It's an amazing pedal that was on my board for probably 1-2 years straight. I’m talking about the Ringworm Ring Modulator. Let me break that down a little further: this is a ring modulator called the ringworm. Greatest name ever imagined for any product ever made on planet Earth ever.**

**Feel free to use that copy, Jeorge. That’s a freebie.

This thing has a lot of controls, a lot of options for how you can play it. I liked to use it really subtly at the front of my board for lead lines, before fuzzes and overdrives. It would add this really cool texture and an almost 3D element to the music, just making things pop out of the mix in a live setting. It's a great pedal. It runs at 18 volts.

Pro tip: if you try to run it at 9 volts, it doesn't work. I've been there, done that. Learn from my mistakes.

The Purple Platypus

The last Way Huge pedal I’m going to brag on is the Purple Platypus. I asked Jeorge to explain the name of this one, and he very graciously pointed out the theme in his pedal names: colorful animals. You might've seen this all along: the Green Rhino, the Blue Hippo, the Red Llama, and now a Purple Platypus. It just makes sense.

I'm told the Purple Platypus is an octave drive, so this is a really cool concept and very original in the pedal world. Now you've heard me talk on and about octave fuzz pedals. I play them all the time. I'm a big fan. I have them in my line. I even did an episode called Octave Fuzz 101. Now octave fuzzes and this pedal -- the Purple Platypus -- have something in common: it's not a clean octave. It's not like a micro POG or some TC Electronics / DSP octave thing that has the low in the high.

The Purple Platypus doesn’t do this. All that means is it's taking the signal of the guitar slightly overdriven and doubling over the waveform and creating an octave up. So instead of a fuzz, he combined that octave sound with his old Red Llama. The result is really dirty and gnarly, it tracks weird, and it's beautiful. It's really unique and out of the box. So if you're looking for a new way to overdrive and distort your signal, check this out.

Jeorge also has one more claim to fame that’s pretty impressive: he was the first to use the triple-pole double-throw footswitch, A.K.A., the mechanical foot switch that all pedal builders like myself have used, currently use, or have at least used in the past. It's a big deal. This dude basically invented the true bypass footswitch. I think that’s worth talking about.

I hope this article inspired you to go out and try some Way Huge pedals for yourself, for two reasons: 1.) These are just quality pedals, and everyone should try them out. 2.) They're important to the history of guitar, pedals, and music. Jeorge Tripps and his work with Way Huge is a big deal. He's one of the first ever boutique builders in the United States and he helped people like me get started with pedals. He’s kind of a big deal.

Perhaps a way huge deal?

Okay, that was the last one, I promise.