01—EarthQuaker Devices
Hizumitas
The Boris guitar tone — Pink, Heavy Rocks, Akuma no Uta — boiled into a pedal.
The most authentic 'doom-stoner Big Muff' pedal in production. A specific reference. If you know what an Elk Sustainar is, you already want this.
02—On the bench
EarthQuaker's homage to the Elk BM Sustainar — a rare 1970s Japanese Big Muff-derivative that became famous as the secret weapon of Shinya Yamamoto of Boris. Hizumitas (Japanese: 'distortion') uses NOS Japanese silicon transistors to recreate the Sustainar's gnarly, woolly, mid-scooped fuzz character. Tonally it's a Big Muff family pedal, but darker, looser, and more aggressive — less for lead lines, more for huge stoner-doom power chords. Three knobs: volume, sustain, tone. No frills. Made in collaboration with Yamamoto himself, who used the original Sustainar on Boris's seminal albums. A specific reference, beautifully executed.
- 01darker and woollier than a standard Big Muff
- 02huge mid-scoop — chords sound massive
- 03single notes get lost — buy it for chords
- 04stays controlled even at max sustain
- 05doesn't like a buffer in front
03—Contested claims · 2
Where readers pushed back.
@Johnny1d ago “Buy this instead of a Big Muff. Tell your friends.”
The bloom is not one adjective; it is the whole argument. I A/B'd a Hizumitas against a Ram's Head reissue on a session in March — same guitar, same Bassman. Every chord through the Muff collapsed into a single fizzy block; the Hizumitas kept the third and the seventh alive all the way through the decay. The $114 difference bought the only fuzz take that survived the mix. Anchoring is a fair hit and I'll wear it — strike the Sustainar sentence and the ranking doesn't move an inch. Some pedals cost more because they do more. Jason has played one. He knows.
@jason2d ago “Buy this instead of a Big Muff. Tell your friends.”
'Instead of a Big Muff' is price gymnastics. A Big Muff is $85 new — the op-amp reissue, or the Green Russian at $99, sitting on every counter in America. The Hizumitas is $199, and the case for it is that it undercuts a $3000 Sustainar. That's anchoring, not analysis — 'cheaper than a unicorn' has never been a value story. To be clear, the pedal sounds genuinely great; I've played one and the bloom on chords is real. But the honest sentence is 'buy this as your second fuzz,' because at $199 against $85 it has to beat the Muff by more than one adjective to earn the difference — and the square inch.
04—In the room
Where else this pedal lives.
- Shinya Yamamoto
- Wata
- J Mascis
EarthQuaker Hoof for a more flexible fuzz; Hizumitas for the specific Sustainar sound.