Caroline Wave Cannon

Caroline makes some really cool pedals. Sadly with this one, there is so much of the pedal’s functionality that is meant to interact with a guitar’s electronics, that most of this pedal is lost on horn players. That being said, this can still give your sound a fuzzy, distorted punch in the gut!

External Control: None
Cost: $$

HornFX Review

Interface:  2/5
Although the pedal is simply laid out, the pictorial representations can be confusing if you do not read the manual. They also have diminished capabilities when doing through a microphone, as the pedal was designed specifically to interact with a guitar’s knobs.

Versatility: 1/5
Since the capabilities of this pedal are greatly diminished through a microphone, its tones are vastly limited. There may only be a setting or two that works well.

Tonal Reproduction: 2/5
The nature of this pedal is to drastically alter sound. Although its sounds are cool, they are not the most true to the tone of your horn.

Live application: 2/5
If you can find a setting that sounds great on this pedal and plan on using it only for that, this will work well. If you are looking to have a drive pedal that you can tweak or fine tune on the fly, this will provide some serious disappointment.

Product Information

The long story short is that this thing is an unrepentant, unapologetic distortion pedal that is totally nasty and fun. This Cannon comes pre-loaded with balls (pun alert!) and is capable of going from cranked, lightly dirty amp tones to the sound of a furry Godzilla devouring a junkyard full of broken a/c window units.

It’s different than the original, which was based on the classic ’70s fuzzstortions we grew up playing. It’s different from our Haymaker™, which is a wide range drive pedal based around the rotation of a clipping network into different locations in the circuit, and which is intended to respond and feel like an extension of your amp. This pedal is really about rocking your socks off.

While it can do some extremely cool mild-to-medium crunch tones, Wave Cannon II is really capable of overwhelming your amp. The focus (mids) and tone controls are different from what we’ve done before and can give you a really broad range of textures and voicings. There is a LOT of gain and volume on tap, as we’d been infuriated in the past by great sounding classic distortion pedals we’ve owned that didn’t go far enough with clean amps, or were quieter than unity gain or the bypass signal. The rumble switch allows more low end if you want it, or lets you tighten things up if you don’t need it.

For a taste of what we’re going for, enjoy a perusal of our Wave Cannon MkII manual. As per all Caroline pedals, WC MKII runs on standard industry 9V DC power supplies and features true bypass switching. It is a good pedalboard citizen that plays well with others.

Product info taken from the Caroline website.