Women Musicians Call Out Sexist Ad For "Pussy Melter" Guitar Effect

There’s gross, and then there’s this—a guitar pedal effect called the “Pussy Melter” being available for sale in 2018.

TC Electronics, the Danish maker of audio equipment, was recently called out for promoting a guitar pedal effect called the Pussy Melter TonePrint on its website. The name of the product indicates to me that it was most likely thought up of by one or several grody dudes who like making their buddies laughs but in fact, have never spoken to a woman before in their lives.

The page for the Pussy Melter states it was a collaboration between TC and the comedy metal band Steel Panther, and features a photo of the band’s guitarist Satchel:

Wanna make a physical impact on your audiences, with an epic delay tone? Then Satchel’s got you covered! When we met up with Steel Panther’s oh-so-humble guitarist, he had only one condition: that the tone be as wet as the ladies on the front row!

(The page has now been taken down, but a cached version of it still exists.)

The fact that a “comedy” metal band had some hand in making this means the company could defend it with the old “It was a joke!” argument. But it’s a disgusting joke, and a bad one!

On Monday, the Twitter account of Canadian rock brand Braids tweeted a screenshot of the ad and wrote “What f*cking year is this ???” They added “As a female guitarist and just a female in general this makes me super disappointed!” Braids also shared a link to a petition calling on TC to remove the guitar effect from its website.

Michelle Zauner, the frontwoman of indie rock band Japanese Breakfast, replied to the tweet, adding: “This is fucking disgusting.” Emily Reo, the singer and synth-pop musician, also wrote “ew what the fuck, i thought making pedals that break all the time was bad enough.”

The least they could do is make something equally as offensive to men, like “Wash Your Hair” or “Don’t Be Gross—We Mean That Physically And In Terms Of The Things You Say To Women!”