Germanium Drive SE – A classic germanium pre-amplifier

Description

So what’s “SE” about this? The enclosure is golden with vintage bakelite knobs. Limited run (only 5 are built like this).

Germanium Drive is our first ever pedal and as the name suggests it is a classic overdrive pedal, driven by a NOS germanium transistor (we guitarists do love NOS, don’t we?). As with everything NOS it has a certain quality/sound/feel to it. You can’t deny it …

However, it doesn’t end there … Germanium Drive is actually four pedals in one (the internal trimmers not counted …). You’ve got the low-drive sound – from clean boosts to hairy crunch and the more-section. The more-section drives the transistor a little harder so that it gets more into the the region of a classic germanium fuzz. On top of that the pedal utilises an output transformer to add depth. However at some extreme settings the transformer gets overdriven, too.

That’s for the basics. To take it a step further we added a switch that triples the 9 V DC from your standard pedal power supply to 27 V DC internally. Resulting not only in way more headroom but also in a cleaner, fuller signal. There is no standard setting. If you prefer it clean and sometimes need some dirt, then 27 V is your standard. If you are on the dirtier side and sometimes need a clean boost/drive, then 9 V is your standard.

The controls are:

• On / More – switches the pedal on and/or selects the higher drive section
• Voltage – low and high, 9 V or 27 V internally (with standard center negative 9 V DC power supply)
• Low cut – cleans up the signal if it gets to muddy, influences the drive as it sits before the drive section and lower frequencies tend to drive the circuit sooner
• Gain – determines the drive, from zero (no drive) to full (highest gain)
• Level 1 – sets the output level for the low drive side – with gain at zero (fully counter clock wise) unity is at 12 o’clock
• Level 2 – sets the output level for the high drive side independently
• Internal trimmers “low” and “high” – presets the gain of the low and high drive side. The pedal might go into self oscillation when the high trimmer gets past 3 o’clock! This is no fault!

Our pedals are build to order, current lead time is 7-14 days.