Eddie Rifkind Shots Fired!! A Fuzzboost & Oscillator Pedal

Inspired by a viral police incident, Eddie Rifkind & Capitalist Death Cult team up on this creation.

From the king of pedal comedy, Eddie Rifkind may have one upped their hilarious Karen and KarenX work from the past years. This is the Shots Fired!! pedal, a fuzzy gain circuit mixed with an oscillator circuit for a lot of fun noisemaking. Inspired by a viral incident where a police officer mistook falling acorns for gun shots at his car and promptly began blasting shots off at an invisible foe.

Available for $150 from their website or Reverb, the Shots Fired!! has an op amp gain circuit with level and fuzz controls. The oscillation side of the pedal gives you a blend knob, voltage knob, and pitch knob to dial in different frequencies, thresholds between the guitar and oscillator, and volume of the oscillation. It’s also designed to interact differently depending on what type of amp and gain structure is around the pedal, giving it a lot of flexibility.

Demo Time

I’m running my HSS Strat right into the Shots Fired!! with no other pedals in the mix. Thats’ running into the Boss GX-10 for a clean Fender-ish amp sound with a little bit of delay to thicken it up. Then the signal hits the U Audio Volt276 interface before recording into my laptop.

My Thoughts

It took me a few minutes to figure out but I had a great time with the Shots Fired!! on my first go-round with it. This is actually a really nice sounding fuzz/drive pedal if you don’t even touch the oscillation part of the equation. It’s thick, warm, and very amp-like, with this heavy but not overly compressed distortion profile. That’s what really separates this pedal from other oscillator/synthy pedals like the Glitchwave I reviewed earlier this year. If you don’t want to get glitchy all the time, you stick this on your board and use it was a go-to warm fuzz pedal. But it then provides you the opportunity to get weird with it whenever you so choose.

When I did use this pedal’s oscillation features and controls, I really liked how easy it was to dial in more subtle sounds that add depth and texture to the distortion sound. It could produce plenty of noise that was not overpowering and instead added a nice ripple or modulation-like movement to the sound. I found the Shots Fired!! particularly effective for arpeggios and single note phrases that needed just a little extra oomph.

While it can certainly get really far out there, enough to keep most noise musicians happy, these kinds of pedals are only great when they can be dialed in. Eddie Rifkind and Capitalist Death Cult really got this one right in that regard. When you add in the multiple roles this pedal can provide, the sensitivity of the controls, and the $150 USD price tag, it equates to a really wonderful pedal. I do think the aesthetic is pretty clearly playing on the whole EQD schtick, but I get the sense it is in more of an appreciative way than say a Demon FX-way. Grab your own via their website or do me a solid and go find one on Reverb using my affiliate link.