Zip...zilch...nada...
We're always shivering with anticipation for our next serving from Caroline Guitar Company's delicious effect pedal gumbo. Let's not mince words. Caroline, a group among the most skilled and inventive effect slingers these days, always has something tasty cooked up for a musical smorgasbord.
Let's cut the food analogies – I'm getting hungry.
Caroline is famously a brand with plenty of wild and inventive sounds up their sleeves. From their charming, lo-fi delays and modulators like the Kilobyte, Megabyte, and Somersault to their high-gain distortions like the Shigeharu, CROM, and Hawaiian Pizza, it's always a delight to take part in Caroline's audible feast. Hawaiian Pizza. Man...back to the food, again.
The pedal on the chopping block today is a doozy. Let's talk about it. This is the Caroline Wave Cannon Zero.
Shop the Caroline Wave Cannon Zero
The Wave Cannon Canon
A zero in name, though a definite number one in our hearts, the Caroline Wave Cannon Zero is the latest version of a Caroline classic. The past two Wave Cannon versions are famous among dirt-wranglers with their medium-to-high-gain bite and distinctly "rodent"-like tonality. In its previous iterations, the Wave Cannon played with classic Caroline interactivity and expressive character. Always a dependable dirt circuit with a little something extra hiding under the hood, the Caroline Wave Cannon has remained a winner round after round, version after version.
This latest version of the Wave Cannon plays off its most recent Wave Cannon MKII predecessor in its layout, added customization options, and Havoc footswitch. Fans of Caroline's last Wave Cannon will have a familiar base to kick off and new worlds to explore. Through the Wave Cannon Zero, Caroline clocks in with one of their classic design archetypes and expands the scope of the experience exponentially. At the word "go," the Wave Cannon Zero delivers a satisfying distorted experience – but we're not here just for the word "go!" I mean, it's a lovely word, and where would The Go-Go's be without it? But still.
Let's get into what makes the Wave Cannon Zero shine. Let's start with its primary effect controls.
Explaining the Controls
Getting Overdriven
Across its face, this pedal's got four enticingly twistable knobs. Left to right, top to bottom, we have Volume, Gain, Tone and Havoc controls. We know what you're thinking, "The Havoc switch has a knob now too, what's next?" Well, let's put a pin in that for now and talk about the basic three effect controls.
Gain
Your classic dirt control. Turn the knob clockwise and get a heavier dose of dirt – counterclockwise and get a lighter one, no surprises there. We'd place this as your main entryway into the distorted world the Wave Cannon Zero offers. Call it a distorted overdrive or an overdriven distortion, the Wave Cannon has plenty of dirt on tap to get crunchy, heated, fuzzy, and anything in between. Notably, the Gain control really kicks into gear past the 2 o'clock position for entering heavier distortion territories. Wherever you place the Gain control, however, you can expect at least a reliable, medium-gain drive.
Tone
Highlights and lowlights. Roll up on the knob to introduce more highs into the circuit, accenting the overall voice and spiking the treble. Like any good tone control, this dial is responsive in helping pick crunchy sweet spots in response to the Gain control. Punch up on Tone and undershoot Gain to get a crispy tone to strum through chords on rhythm guitar or get some responsive bite out of choppy power chords. The Wave Cannon Zero's Gain and Tone controls act responsively to one another to form the basis of your overdrive experience.
Gain Shapes and Voltages
Beyond the basic, three-dial overdrive control setup, the Wave Cannon Zero introduces two additional dials to bridge the gap into the new experiences this Caroline creation introduces. In the middle of this configuration, two smaller control dials appear. One is called Shape, the other is Volts. What this means for your weekend, tonight at 8.
Shape
This control inches in to introduce the Wave Cannon Zero's more experimental tendencies as a drive pedal. The Shape control works to sculpt the structure of the gain signal coming through. Notably, this control does not work on a zero-to-ten, one-end-minimum, one-end-maximum spectrum, rather, it offers a more exploratory experience.
Make like Chubby Checker and do the twist on this control and hear your gain structure mold and blend into new forms. Hear the gain dialed in get a thicker bass response, more aggressive and heated, or more chilled and lowkey without losing out on the distorted character that made it captivating in the first place. This Shape control is perfect for strumming out a large chord and exploring its many interacting frequencies while it rings out. Higher gain settings lend the notes within chords the opportunity to rub up against each other with distorted character, offering a lot of overdriven resonations to sift through.
Volts
Volts is an interesting addition to the Wave Cannon formula. Essentially, Volts works to starve the circuit of power. Twisting this knob counterclockwise will reduce the output of the whole pedal, sounding like a dying battery on the way down. There is no particular reason to adjust the Volts control too heavily, as it does exactly what it says on the tin. This control can be left at max and there wouldn't be much missed from what one would expect from a traditional drive effect experience.
Volts is effective in starving the circuit and powering it down, more or less. This would be the end of the story for Volts control, if not for the secret weapon of the Wave Cannon Zero – the true cannon of it all, the Havoc switch.
“Just leave the voltage up and don’t mess around with that Havoc switch. (I guess you could say we’ve gotten to know you. And you’re not going to do that.)” - Caroline Guitar Company
Wreaking Havoc
Well, we've made it. Great job, everyone, let's call it here now and get an early start tomorrow? Nah, that's not why we're here. Let's talk the Havoc switch.
Havoc
A classic element of Caroline effect pedals, Havoc. Adding in that certain je ne sais quoi, each Caroline pedal's Havoc control does something different to make it unique. The previous Wave Cannon's Havoc switch was a feedback and unpredictable noise generator. Have we learned our lesson, here? What lesson was there to learn? Well, if you've still got that Havoc switch and dial thought pinned, let's whip it out.
The Havoc switch on the Wave Cannon Zero follows in Wave Cannon tradition as a positive feedback control. With momentary or latching engagement, the Wave Cannon Zero can launch itself into a new stratosphere of distorted noise.
Fair warning, there is no preface to this disaster – especially if you have the Volts control maxed out.
This is where the Havoc dial comes into play. While the positive feedback does its thing (you know, the cause-a-ruckus thing), reach down to the Havoc dial and give it a turn to highlight different frequencies in the distortion. This generally gravitates in a relative direction of higher frequencies moving clockwise and lower frequencies counterclockwise. If you're a brave-hearted sonic spelunker, take the noisy plunge and explore all the beautifully disastrous frequencies you've created.
There's that one line from Die Hard:
"And when Alexander saw the breadth of his domain he wept, for there were no more worlds to conquer." - Alan Rickman, as Hans Gruber
We're feeling like that, but in the complete inverse. There are so many more realms of distortion left to claim.
Features & Connections
We've covered a lot of ground here, so let's bring it all home with a few more things to consider.
The Wave Cannon Zero comes equipped with a switch to assist you in your integration of it into a pedalboard. A side-mounted Order toggle helps in automatically shaping the character of the Wave Cannon Zero to accommodate for whether it lands first in the chain or not. This tiny addition works wonders in building distortions into larger schemes of a board.
For power, the Wave Cannon takes a standard, nine-volt, center-negative tip supply. Caroline strongly advises against the use of any higher voltage – and hey, it's the industry standard, there's no need to go any crazier. The Wave Cannon Zero is decked in a clean, crimson finish and carries with it that classic Caroline aesthetic – so this distortion is photo-ready for the next Instagram pedalboard shoot.
Caroline Wave Cannon Zero Final Thoughts
We're all jazzed up over here over the Wave Cannon Zero. As an overdriven distortion or a distorted overdrive, the Wave Cannon Zero is a stellar addition to any setup. It boasts massive, distorted muscle with the finesse to reel it all in comfortably for anyone to pick up and find a sweet spot of their own. With its control interface, it cashes unique checks for warm and crispy overdrives, woolly and fuzzy distortions, and buzzy and sputtering noises all at once.
Across the Wave Cannon Zero experience, this pedal invites you to dial in responsible and upstanding overdrives nice enough to meet your parents, as well as push the envelope and turn your signal into a beautifully self-oscillating mess of scrambled eggs. We're back to food. That's called bookending, folks.
Caroline Guitar Company hits another home run on their classic distortion circuit, and we couldn't be more thrilled. Take this Wave Cannon for a spin and feel the power of zero.
