COUNTLESS STOMPBOXES EMULATE legendary amps as well as the original versions of pioneering pedals. Meanwhile, collaborative artist pedals are being made ad infinitum because, just like potato chips, we can’t have just one. But hold on — somebody designed a pedal that aims to imitate the sound of a band or a particular album?! What is this sorcery you speak of? Well, funny you should ask because a homespun U.K. brand named Funny Little Boxes has done just that with a brilliantly novel stompbox called the Skeleton Key. It deftly replicates many of the identifiable guitar tones recorded by Josh Homme and his band, Queens of the Stone Age.
This isn’t the first time Funny Little Boxes has daringly attempted such an undertaking. Afew years ago, Matthew Webster, the affable guitar instructor from his “Let’s Play All” You-Tube channel, challenged his mate, Andrew Ilgunas, a pedal builder from Norwich, England, to create a pedal that captures the tones heard on Pearl Jam’s breakthrough 1991 album, Ten, which culminated in the fantastic 1991 pedal. If you haven’t heard it yet, you should check out how strikingly close the pedal nails the gain stage of Stone Gossard’s and Mike McCready’s JCMfueled Marshalls. This time the pair are back with the aptly named Skeleton Key pedal, which seemingly unlocks the core tones of most QOTSA songs. One key problem they encountered when voicing the pedal is that while there is a resounding similarity to the QOTSA guitar sound, it’s far more nuanced than you’d expect. For one, Homme’s sound isn’t as saturated or high-gain as you would believe it to be, and more importantly, the Skeleton Key is not a clone of the mythic Peavey Decade amp (the apparent “secret weapon” of QOTSA’s recorded basslines). The duo’s thorough deep-dive resulted in an original circuit for an op-amp distortion pedal with a simple three-knob trio of Volume, Gain and Tone; top-mounted jacks; LED power indicator and 9-volt power jack (no battery). Of note, Webster was able to enlist Boneface — the artist behind QOTSA’s album artwork for 2013’s …Like Clockwork and 2017’s Villains —for the original artwork and handwritten control labels that adorn the pedal’s face.
It’s very difficult for one pedal to reproduce an artist’s sonic fingerprint, something that was most likely achieved with numerous amps, effects and compression. You would view it with the same degree of skepticism as you would at a preset that reads “Cliffs of Dover” on a digital modeler. But I have to hand it to the blokes behind the Skeleton Key for getting wildly close to that elusive QOTSA sound. Moreover, as a fascinating by-product of this venture, FLB may have unintentionally introduced an original-sounding drive pedal that I find compelling. So, no, it doesn't encompass all of Homme’s grinding tones; however, it’s best to characterize the Skeleton Key as the main drive ingredient of the QOTSA recipe. Meaning that the sledgehammer rhythms of “The Lost Art of Keeping a Secret” and “No One Knows” are good barometers of the SK’s core tone. Anything beyond that, you’ll need some help —courtesy of a fuzz and an octave pedal. Both the Gain and Tone controls are highly interactive to dredge up that tight-yet-sludgy fuzziness Homme &Co. slogged on their songs, and setting the Tone and Gain around 9 and 3 o’clock respectively gets you 90 percent there.