YELLOWCAKE
YOUR MOM
REVIEW BY SEAN HENNESSEY
STREET PRICE $185.00
Boutique fuzzes come in
all shapes, sizes and tones,
each trying to make their
mark, through presentation,
subtle circuit modification,
or total tonal revision. With
the Your Mom, a handmade
OD-Fuzz based on a
germanium-silicon transistor
hybrid, Yellowcake proves
itself to be differently: it
wants to stamp its own
identity on this storied
effect and it has succeeded.
While the Your Mom is a
truly diverse box, offering
a range of gain from the
lightest of overdrives to
full on fuzz, at heart it is a
snide little brat, offering a
bright, brash snarl that just
adores single coil or hot
58
GEAR REVIEW
//
humbucking pickups. The
design makes this clear,
featuring knobs for Level,
Fuzz, and Input, as well as a
Bias one that moonlights as
the pedal’s LED, but with no
option to adjust the tone.
The Your Mom will go its
own way.
Yellowcake aptly advertises
the Input as adjusting
“from a clean to a dirty fuzz
signal.” In use, it functions
similar to the volume on
your guitar: turning it
down drops the overall
level, tames the fuzz, and
somewhat darkens the tone,
though it never loses its inyour-face character. This is
interesting, as altering the
volume on the guitar itself
Yellowcake Your Mom
doesn’t affect the pedal’s
performance at all—it still
growls and sneers just like
it always has, only at a
quieter level.
The Bias control starves the
pedal of power, allowing the
Your Mom to emulate a fuzz
with a dying battery. Turning
it right opens up a plethora
of tones that initially add
to the brattiness of the
box then gets angrier, until
it sounds like the signal is
losing the fight, all sustain is
lost, and the tone devolves
to levels many bit crushers
would dream of reaching.
Run between a Les Paul
with PAF-style pickups
and an old Marshall head,
with everything at noon