Review: smallsound/bigsound Year4545

The smallsound/bigsound Year4545 is a crazy fuzz sent through a pair of oscillators that absolutely destroy your tone in the most beautiful ways. It produce all sorts of noisy fuzz generating different octaves, hisses squeals and insane amounts of noise (the good kind), perfect for the experimentalist in all of us. Keep reading to hear more about this eye-opening fuzz/noisemaker.

The Hardware

For all the tweaking ability the 4545 provides, it comes in a nice compact package, the same size as the ss/bs Fuck Overdrive and Team Awesome Fuzz Machine. Input and output jacks and the 9v power plug are all top mounted, perfect for saving space. The whole pedal feels solid and well put together. The controls are as follows, a texture control, x and y oscillator frequency controls, volume and a clean volume controls as well as switches to switch between frequency ranges on the oscillators and a tracking switch. Also there is a gate switch to engage for even more tonal range.

The Sounds

The Year 4545 generates a absolute cacophonous walls of sound that sound so layered, it's like you're playing with an entire orchestra of noise-thirsty guitarists. You can also thin things down for cool octave generation and to add a cool effect to make your solos stand out. I think its fun to just flip switches and turn knobs to find completely unique tones that can't be found in anything else. It's just so fun to experiment with, especially when utilizing the clean blend (this does not come standard but can be added at a very reasonable price) with other fuzz and octave pedals. The smallsound/bigsound Year4545 is a truly inspiring pedal that transcends any traditional classification. I think this pedal could work for just about any style of guitar player, not just the experiementalist. I can't exactly explain all of the sounds so just have listen to the clips below. Keep in mind these are just a few sounds you can get out of literally thousands (I wish I could show you all of them).

smallsound/bigsound Noisy Doom by Mike Fetting
Here is a dark noisy doom tone perfect for ominous, wall of sound drones.

smallsound/bigsound Year4545 Octave by Mike Fetting
Here is an octave effect produced by the Year4545.

Cavernous by EelFistNoise
This is my own music from my solo noise/doom project. On this track I used the Year4545, a Dwarfcraft Eau Claire Thunder and a Dr. Scientist Reverberator. The Thunder had the feedback loop engaged and the Reverberator was set to the dark plate setting. I figured I'd give you readers an example of how I use these pedals in my own music.

Final Words

The Year4545 is an effect that I think every guitarist and bassist could appreciate. Sure some players may use more sounds than others but it's a great tool to break any player out of a rut and inspire something new with it's unique sounds. It's the most unique fuzz pedal I have ever played and it's instant inspiration for my playing. Now it might take some tweaking and manual reading to figure this beast out at first and if you're looking for a typical silicon or germanium fuzz, you probably won't find the Year4545 too attractive. I still urge everyone to at least check out it, it could open many new doors in your musical journey. For more info on the Year4545 check out it's Product Page on the smallsound/bigsound website.