Gear Ant’s Cicada Fuzz + Phaser Pedal Is Pure Madness

This new creation pairs spitty fuzz with swirling phaser to make quite the noisemaker.

Every now and then a pedal comes along that’s sort of impractical, but feels entirely necessarily. That’s the best way to describe Gear Ant’s latest creation, the Cicada. And don’t let that description fool you, it’s not an insult. Instead, Gear Ant took a bit of a leap with their second release, making something that is awfully unique, and not for everyone. However, if you’re a fan of swirling, sonic madness, this might be the most interesting pedal of 2023.

The Cicada is two circuits in one; a phaser on the left, and a fuzz on the right. However, these circuits are pretty quirky in and of themselves. This is not a smooth, crushing fuzz circuit. It’s spitty, gritty, and sharp, meant to absolute obliterate the signal. It cuts through like a broken synthesizer, and even with the fuzz knob turned down, you can only hope to contain, not stop, the Cicada fuzz.

Check my demo below! Featuring my RWM Guitars Tele and my Universal Audio Dream ’65 Amp Sim!

The phaser side of things is definitely a bit more familiar and reigned in, though to my ears this isn’t just a simple MXR Phase 90 circuit. It has a lot of sweep and movement, with the cranked depth and speed getting pretty off the tracks. While it can be more subtle at lowering settings, cranking the knobs seems meant to send your guitar spiraling into chaos.

Put them together and my goodness do you have some cool sounds. And here’s the thing, they may sound outrageous when you’re just playing the pedal by itself. But I found that when I layered Cicada lead lines over more *normal* guitar playing via my looper pedal, it was shockingly musical. That’s right, it feels and sounds weird, but not too weird that it can’t be useful!

You can begin to see how this might fit into your music, adding a very weird element, but not one though would destroy a performance (unless you want it to?). I’m sort of picturing the Cicada from Gear Ant as a bit of a secret weapon for live shows. Not dissimilar from the Owlman fuzz/ring modulator we reviewed last week. It’s something you can kick on for riffs, breakdowns, or leads that will totally separate you from the pack.

The truth is, this isn’t a pedal that anyone needs. So when evaluating it, the Cicada is totally a luxury or creativity purchase. It’s not a tube screamer that’ll be the core of your rig, at least for most people. But it’s a lot of fun, and shows a great spark of creativity from a smaller boutique builder who’s not just building overdrive clones like everyone else.

The $199.99 price tag is definitely on the steeper side, but it’s not unfair at all for how fun and inspiring this pedal is. But again, this is something you buy for fun, not because it will be foundational like some of the other gear I’ve reviewed. Either way, it’s a great pedal and will surely be in the upper echelon of reviews from 2023!