Cryptid Effects unleashes a super versatile somewhat Menacing Indrid Cold Grinning Man High Gain Transistor Fuzz with asymmetrical clipping OpAmp input stage

This post is in part due to mutual friend Mike Hernandez - who has championed Lane Holloway’s Cryptic Effects for a while. Cryptid’s Siam Howler has come across my radar a couple of times too - and I was meaning to do something with that also - but when I saw the Indrid Cold - I immediately knew what my visual was going to look like - it was a creative spark - and so that gets covered first here.

Lane has very evidently upped his artwork game here - with a highly arresting design - that appealed to me immediately - especially when the ’red eye’ lights up on Tone Bypass. The artwork design is a little reminiscent of my friend Charles at Pasta Pedals - and there are some really smart details in how the control topology is married to the artwork. I really like the ident for this brand too. All-in-all the Indrid Cold is a real step up for Lane - and hopefully a good sign of things to come from this brand.

The Riff demo (first one below) is the one that really sold this pedal to me - and I am definitely looking to secure this one relatively soon. There are 5 pedals currently on the Cryptid roster - and those that interest me the most are the Indrid Cold, Siam Howler and Everlasting Tantrum - all fuzzes - while the perfect execution of the Indrid is what really caught my eye here.

Controls - Master Volume, Sag (Voltage starve), Active Treble (Bite), Active Bass (Rumble), Tone Bypass, Fuzz Bypass.

I obviously love fuzzes - and very much these hind of high octane - hugely shapeable ones - the soft asymmetrical clipping of the input OpAmp, and the harder clipping of those silicon transistors combines beautifully to create some really interesting textures - further extended by the Sag control.

This is definitely one for the acquisitions list for me - it goes for $175 on the Cryptic Effects Webstore - Lane now needs to ensure that everything that follows maintains this elevated standard set by the Indrid Cold. I’m not about to diminish the quality and impact of his other pedals - but the Indrid really stands out - for all the right reasons. I think this one’s going to do really well for Lane - once word gets out!

I look forward to posting back again when my one of these lands - while I don’t think my visual can necessarily be further improved - much like this pedal’s execution is also already perfect - we’ll see at that time. For sure we could do with a few additional high quality demos to give this pedal the push it deserves!