Fuzz Review: Wounded Paw – Battering Ram

Conclusion:

This is the most versatile analogue dirt pedal I have laid hands on. The overdrive side is a solid tube screamer inspired dirt that in the ‘lo’ position does a great job retaining lows and provides some really nice low gain tones. This can be cranked up to a some pretty significant sizzle, but the lows start to suffer at that point.

Firing on the fuzz side opens a world of wild possibilities. This unique circuit reminds me a bit of a superfuzz with it’s sizzle and excessive force encountered with a flip of the octave switch. While it doesn’t do a solid job of retaining lows in itself, the parallel blend occurring with the overdrive before output brings the bottom end back in. Rocking out with this pedal gave me a few of those ‘rock god’ moments that really hit you in the gut. This kind of visceral joy doesn’t come around for me too often, jaded and scarred as I am, so when they do I get really excited.

This is a pedal that transitions from low gain to face melter at the click of a switch, and can be configured anywhere in between. I often feel that versatile pedals fail to provide anything unique or touch ‘awesome’ the way more specialized pedals do, but Battering Ram accomplishes it. I think either side by itself would fail to inspire, but combined as a single pedal with it’s unique blending arrangement create something quite interesting.

As always, if you have any questions, leave a comment or let me know

Note: A rating of 5 = acceptable and should considered a ‘good’ basic score