Ah, the things you stumble upon on Reddit. What you see below is the Berlin Wall Distortion, a distortion pedal built around an actual piece of that famous symbol of oppression. Yeah, you read right.

This is next level pedal madness. A guy has built a distortion pedal that is based around an actual chunk of the Berlin Wall. Meet the Berlin Wall Distortion.

The Berlin Wall Distortion is based on the Electra distortion, a classic overdrive circuit that was built into the cavity of Electra MPC guitars from the 70s.

The pedal is centred around a piece of the Berlin Wall that the maker collected in 1990 (the chunk of grey concrete in the top left), and built inside a battered metal container. The circuitry can also been seen through a transparent plate, which reveals a ‘map’ of Berlin.

As the website for the pedal explains, “the Lenin pin is connected to the transistor base and can be used to distort the sound. The rotary switch [on the left] is used to guide the incoming signal towards three different capacitors.

The first setting goes to Berlin Tegel Airport and emphasises treble, setting two passes RAF Gatow airport emphasizing bass moderately and setting three passes trough Tempelhof Airport and it emphasises bass tones heavily.”

How sick is that?

Check out the full description of the pedal and download the schematics here, and watch the demo below.