The interrogation of Agent 13
Canada’s Solidgold Soundlabs is a bit of an unknown in the boutique pedal market. You don’t see a lot of chatter about them in the forums or see too much second hand sales of their product, so when Greg and I struck up a conversation regarding the redesign of his pedal line, I asked him to send me a pair of pedals to review. The first of the two I dove into was the Agent 13 fuzz – an off-shoot of the company’s Formula 69 fuzz box. Whereas the 69 is designed for warm, smooth fuzz tones, the 13 aims to more beastly with thick high gain fuzz and even some broken robot glitch qualities on tap. So how does the Agent 13 stack up again the flood of boutique fuzzes?
The Agent 13 comes in the standard, sliding matchbox-style box that houses most Solidgold stomps. It comes with a good instruction sheet and warranty information, four self-adhesive rubber feet (should you want to apply them) and a Solidgold logo pic. The pedal itself has a powder-coated black finish and sports a white graphic that is a bit tough to make out, but I believe it to be the business-end of a gun. It runs on a standard 9v battery or via a 9v DC negative ground power supply. The pedal has three knob controls – Fuzz, Level and Bias. The first two are self-explanatory. The Bias knob allows the user to tweak the mid-range voicings of the pedal. A three-way mini-toggle acts as a simple EQ. Center is treble mode, left is normal and right is bass boost.
With the Strat, bridge pick-up, I dialed in a moderate fuzz tone. With the Fuzz at 11 o’clock, Bias at Noon and Level at around 3 o’clock. I’ll also go through the toggle progression from left to right during the clip. Here is a little Black Crowes riff. First clean, then the fuzz.
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I dig the fizzy residue on the normal setting of the toggle. When you switch to the treble punch, you get a lo-fi feel that comes off a touch mechanical, but still musical. The bass boost is a beast and thickens up the tone to the consistency of month-old molasses! I found this worked best when the fuzz was dialed back.
Switching over to the Les Paul, I dialed the Agent 13 in for maximum fuzz. With the Fuzz dimed, Bias dimed and Level around noon. You’re going to hear the Bias rolled back during the fuzz section to demonstrate the break-up quality of the control. The fat fuzz tone will become more brittle and broken. First clean, then 13!
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The Agent 13 has a gutteral feel to it will full gain, full bias yet still manages a fizzy sheen that I think makes the pedal unique. As the bias is rolled back, you can really here the thinning of the sound into a more lo-fi, break-up mode.
Back to the Strat, neck pick-up this time, the pedal is dimed again. Both Fuzz and Bias cranked all the way, with Level resting at around noon. First clean, then the fuzz.
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The Agent 13 from Solid Gold FX is a solid entry into the boutique fuzz market. With the glut of fuzz boxes out there, I think the 13 does just enough on the fizz/fuzz side – and at the $165 price point – to make it a stomp worth seeking out if you like a fizzy sheen to your ballsy fuzz. It can also be pushed into noise box/oscillating mode when you tweak the max settings a bit. I had fun with the Agent 13, and I’m betting you would too. That’s our take anyway… your mileage may vary!
PLEASE NOTE: All YMMV Review clips are played through a Reverend Hellhound 40/60 combo amp with 1×12 extension cab. No reverb or other effects were added to the clips. Guitars used in this review include a 1979 Gibson Les Paul Custom and a 1998 Fender American Deluxe Stratocaster.
