Degrade

2023 update: This is a weird circuit. It will behave in strange ways with digital pedals/the occasional classic pedal/etc. Embrace the awkward sounds and make some noise! You have been warned.

2022 update: This circuit now ships with internal volume pot to control the fuzz volume only.

I feel like this pedal requires a bit more explanation than my other offerings. With the ‘Mix’ control at maximum (100% effect), it’s a distortion-leaning *gated* fuzz. (palm-mute away!) With the ‘Mix’ at minimum (mostly dry), it becomes more of a ‘harmonic enhancer”. Turn the mix up between roughly 5-15%, and it becomes a parallel clean/overdrive. 16%-40% has it sounding more like a distortion with a touch of clean tone mixed in. Beyond 40%, it goes right back to where we started… Fuzz with a touch of clean up to full-on distortiony fuzz.

But that’s effectively just covering the one knob. The ‘Clean Filter’ control adjusts how much treble/upper midrange of the clean signal is available to be mixed with the distorted. At minimum, it’s barely attenuating anything within the human-audible frequency range. At maximum, it’s attenuating everything above (frequency) at a rate of 8dB/octave or 20dB /decade. (It’s a single order filter, which offers a gentle, but highly effective attenuation slope) And of course, anywhere in-between min & max will attenuate varying amounts of the highs/upper mids.

The ‘Tone’ control adjusts the fuzz eq as you would expect, by discriminating against highs when turned counter-clockwise, and against lows when turned clockwise.

The ‘Gain’ control is also quite obvious in function, but offers a bit of surprises, depending on what you’re running through the circuit. It has a tendency to overload itself, when an energetic signal is run through it with high-gain, it can cause awkward/hard to repeat glitches of the sound—leading to quite a unique and interesting playing experience.

This is a gated-fuzz. You will lose some sustain.

This circuit also makes you forever guilty of sin. For this I am not accountable. The devil made me do it.