Cave Passive Pedals Furry Tongue

Hey everybody! I have a Furry Tongue! Well, I have one in my pedal board, anyway. This is the latest bass effect pedal that I have received from Cave Passive Pedals.

Cave Passive Pedals is a boutique guitar and bass effect pedal builder located in Australia. I heard about them from my friend Mark Deayton, and I have been very impressed with their products, as well as with Heath and Georgina Cave, who are super-involved with every facet of production, distribution and customer service.

I have previously written reviews of the Cave Passive Pedals Grunt and Grunt Mk. II pedals, and I loved them both. They have simple controls, and add a manageable distortion/boost to my sound.

As with all of their pedals, the first thing to note is that the Furry Tongue does not require a power supply, so there are no batteries, and no need to plug in an AC adaptor. All the power that is needed is provided by the output signal from the guitar or bass. Not only is this convenient for setting up your pedal board, it is nice for the environment to not have more 9-volt batteries going into our landfills.

The Furry Tongue is similar in appearance to the Grunts. It is a compact-sized pedal that measures about 2.75 inches wide, by 4.5 inches long and 1.75 inches tall. This is handy if space on your pedal board is at a premium. The chassis is powder-coated shiny white, with a nice overlay for the logo and control labels. There are no feet on the case, so it is easy to add the Velcro needed to attach it to your pedal board.

This pedal is equipped with true bypass, and I did not notice any difference in sound by putting it before or after my Grunt pedals. Just for grins, I put it in the signal chain before and after my VT Bass pedal, and again it sounded the same. It did not hinder the operation of the VT Bass, either.

The controls are simple: an ON/OFF footswitch and a 4-position tone switch. That’s it. Even I can figure out how to use it.

So, the four different tones settings are all very different. Turning the knob is almost like the variable tone switches on the Kubicki or Aria Super Basses. Here is a brief summary of how I hear the tones, from left to right:

#1 Makes it sound furry, almost like a mid/bass boost, with a loss of some top end

#2 A hollow/thin tone, with a little bit of a drop in volume.

#3 More aggressive and overdriven with a re-introduction of the high tomes. It seems to have a bit more output positions 1 and 2

#4 This position sounds the most processed of the four (to me). It is a cool hollow tone, and the one I would be most likely to use.

For this test, I used a very good passive Fender 57 re-issue Precision Bass strung with D’Addario Chromes. As usual for this bass, I had the volume and tone pots dimed. For amplification I used my Genz Benz Shuttle 6.0 through a Genz Benz Uber Bass 410 cabinet. I kept my usual amp settings with a lot of gain (12 o’clock +) into the tube pre-amp and not much boost to the low frequencies.

I did try a couple of active basses as well, and the Furry Tongue results with them were good, but not quite as dramatic as with a passive bass. Your mileage will vary, depending on your bass, signal chain and eq settings, of course.

Combining the Furry Tongue with the Cave Grunt pedals has given me a lot of new tonal options, and I am very pleased with how this has worked itself into my pedal board.

So, on to the administrivia…

The Furry Tongue comes in a sharp-looking eco-friendly waxed MDF box along with a microfiber cleaning cloth and some basic instructions. That is a lot of adjectives for a box, eh?

All Cave pedals come with a lifetime warranty, which I am sure you will never need. If something ever went wrong, though I am sure they would be happy to help if something went bad.

The Furry Tongue is priced at $129 AUD, or a mere $120 USD (as of today).

Cave Passive Pedals will soon be distributed in the United States through G Spot Music (http://www.g-spot-music.com) or you can contact the Caves directly (http://www.cavepassivepedals.com.au) and they can accept PayPal or bank wire transfers. Shoot them an e-mail for details of shipping costs.

I cannot forget my usual disclaimer: I am an endorsing artist for Cave Passive Pedals, but I paid for my first one, and was totally blown away. I would never represent a product that I do not 100% believe in.