Way Huge Atreidis Analog Weirding Module

Telepathic weapon of sonic destruction? Almost!

You may have noticed, pedal brands have spent a great deal of time in recent years giving us more and more ways of making our guitars not sound like guitars. One of the latest comes from leftfield Way Huge. Named after Paul Atreides, it borrows its sub-moniker from the Weirding Module – the sonic beam weapon David Lynch introduced for his film adaptation of the Dune graphic novels.

Way Huge’s Jeorge Tripps took inspiration from ElectroHarmonix with the Atreides. At first glance, those sliders remind us of our EHX Micro Synth – interestingly, Tripps has based this on the EHX Mini Synthesizer keyboard, as used by Van Halen, Jean Michel Jarre and more. In a nutshell, it’s a synth pedal featuring a few different circuits: an envelope filter, fuzz, phaser and a sub-octave layer. You get a master volume, sensitivity and range controls for the envelope filter, bright and fuzz sliders, a rate control for the phaser and level control for the sub-octave. Inside, there are switches to change the phaser feedback amount, as well as switching the sub from its standard minus-two to one octave below your original signal.

You might overlook the Atreides as a one-trick pony from the spec, but sound-wise it covers everything from Jack White-style ‘torn velcro’ to synthy octave riffs, and it works wonders on 70s funk lines. As it’s polyphonic, you can back off the fuzz and create some cool cleaner lo-fi rhythm parts too, especially with the addition of that phaser. It’s an experimental guitarist’s playground with much to be gained. It tracks with lightning fast speed and is capable of creating some truly monstrous sounds, just like its namesake!

You may find yourself with a bit of a learning curve, but if you’re thinking outside of the stompbox, we’d urge you to give this a try. Stuart Williams

TRY THIS FOR THINKING OUTSIDE OF THE STOMPBOX