A dynamic drive generator that’s as much fuzz as filter.
Many unique and varied drive and fuzz sounds. Surprising dynamic range. High-quality construction. Killer studio potential.
Internal master-volume trimpot. Can be pretty noisy.
$225
Death By Audio Germanium Filter
deathbyaudio.com
I really needed the shot of adrenaline I got from Death By Audio’s Germanium Filter. I appreciated the reminder that stompboxes should prod you along reckless creative vectors. It felt great to play something so simple that sounds so cool in so many ways. It also felt good to tap into a mainline source of sass and attitude.
Obviously, Death By Audio is famous for devices that provoke such reactions. But their new Germanium Filter doesn’t thrill just because it’s weird. It excels at overdrive, distortion, and fuzz. And the germanium circuitry makes it capable of great dynamic nuance. But it’s also positively explosive, buzzes like a two-ton mutant hornet, and gets fantastically trashy. For a pedal with just two knobs and an internal trimpot, its capacity for tone variation and richness across so many different sounds is impressive.
Dynamite Kegger
Even by DBA standards, the Germanium Filter looks crazy cool. The vertically aligned flying saucer knobs for gain and filter are easy to read at long range. A third trimpot for master volume is situated inside the enclosure. That’s a bummer, because the volume can profoundly change the functionality, flexibility, and sound of the pedal by adding copious extra power, thump, and contrast.
One way to extract maximum potential from the Germanium Filter—particularly at higher volume levels—is by employing a dynamic touch. The Germanium Filter is sensitive to guitar volume attenuation in the same way a vintage germanium fuzz like a Fuzz Face is. It’s also responsive to picking dynamics, and even at aggressive gain levels you can clean up with a light touch. This dynamism makes the Germanium Filter an expressive vehicle for heavy electric fingerstyle improvisation. And though it can be a tad noisy in delicate-to-loud applications, I’d argue the tactile thrills are worth it.
Filter to Focus
The filtering aspect of the Germanium Filter is not subtle. The pedal’s output is compressed and highly focused. Yet it can readily shift emphasis from brilliant, scalding top end to heavy-swinging low-midrange without sacrificing potency or its capacity for chord detail. As a result, the number of possible sounds and applications stacks up fast.
There’s plenty of the piercing, gnarly, and funky sounds that Keith Richards would have died for in his ’66–’68 period.
Tone touchstones are elusive when describing the Germanium Filter’s voice. Fuzz sounds at maximum gain are super ripping, especially at treblier settings. DBA mentions recording console drive as an inspiration for the circuit, and it’s easy to hear and feel traces of a vintage console’s input overdrive tendencies. Some early germanium fuzzes could also be a kissing cousins. But the Germanium Filter is more compressed and focused than most mid-’60s fuzzes, and often more savage for it.
Among the cleaner, bass-heavy overdrive sounds there is a hint of the high-mid clang you sometimes hear from a big Marshall stack. The heavy side of the filter can also contribute to the illusion of a 4x12’s sense of mass if you’re trying to make a little amp sound big. But even higher-gain settings sound organic, cohesive, present, and punchy in the top end in a way that makes your amp feel like a living, breathing thing. Indeed, one of the most beautiful things about the Germanium Filter is that it sounds so bold without feeling like an awkwardly grafted appendage to your rig.
Needless to say, it’s pretty easy to craft tone oddities with the Germanium Filter. There’s plenty of the piercing, gnarly, and funky sounds that Keith Richards would have died for in his ’66–’68 period. Some tones could have been a parallel-universe path Jimmy Page might have taken to Led Zeppelin. Mick Ronson probably would not have objected to a go at it either. But the Germanium Filter is by no means just a retro-rock trip. The tight, concise nature of many of these drive tones makes them a perfect pairing for expansive reverbs, delay, and modulation that turn more full-frequency drives to mush. And many post-rock, shoegaze, and improvisational players will dig the way the Germanium Filter sparkles and remains articulate among thick, stacked effects.
The Verdict
Sometimes the right pedal hits you at the right time. And the Germanium Filter sparked a fire that I hadn’t felt in a while. I’m keenly aware that a lot of these tones won’t be for everyone. Players seeking wide-spectrum or transparent drive tones might find the focus of the filter too narrow and many of the tones just plain odd. But I found the Germanium Filter’s stylistic range engaging and vast. Even its most pedestrian overdrive sounds bristle with deviant attitude. Other sounds suggest weird old catalog amps and audio engineers slamming recording console inputs and tweaking EQ to creative ends. And the fuzz tones are among the most exciting I’ve heard in a long time.
It’s probably smart to give the Germanium Filter a go before you buy. At 225 clams, it’s an investment. And some players in search of more even-tempered and predictable tones may struggle to make sense of it. Accordingly, the tones and value scores here should be considered fluid. Players with more conventional goals may want to round down and approach with caution. Weirdos, however, should probably round up and pounce. For players craving a shot of pure, super-heated sound energy, new directions for solos and riffs, or a way to elevate a performance or mundane mix, the Germanium Filter is a treasure in waiting.
Death By Audio Germanium Filter Demo | First Look
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The ’60s Were Weird and So Were the ’90s—Thanks, Santana
Was Supernatural his ultimate gift to the world?
Carlos Santana’s career arc has been a journey. From blowing minds at the far edges of psychedelia at Woodstock to incendiary jazz experimentalism with the likes of John McLaughlin and Alice Coltrane to later becoming a chart-topping star with some of the biggest collaborators in pop and rock, his guitar playing has covered a lot of ground.
On this episode of 100 Guitarists, we’re covering everything about Santana’s playing we can fit in one neat package: How did Santana’s sound evolve? Has any other rock star mentioned John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme on morning network television? Was Supernatural his ultimate gift to the world?
In our new current listening segment, we’re talking about a Bruce Hornsby live record and a recent release from guitarist Stash Wyslouch.
This episode is sponsored by PRS Guitars.
Learn more: https://prsguitars.com.
The legendary string-glider shows Chris Shiflett how he orchestrated one of his most powerful leads.
Break out your glass, steel, or beer bottle: This time on Shred With Shifty, we’re sliding into glory with southern-rock great Derek Trucks, leader of the Derek Trucks Band, co-leader (along with wife Susan Tedeschi) of the Tedeschi Trucks Band, and, from 1999 to 2014, member of the Allman Brothers Band.
Reared in Jacksonville, Florida, Trucks was born into rock ’n’ roll: His uncle, Butch Trucks, was a founding member of the Allman Brothers Band, and from the time he was nine years old, Derek was playing and touring with blues and rock royalty, from Buddy Guy to Bob Dylan. Early on, he established himself as a prodigy on slide guitar, and in this interview from backstage in Kalamazoo, Michigan, Trucks explains why he’s always stuck with his trusty Gibson SGs, and how he sets them up for both slide and regular playing. (He also details his custom string gauges.)
Trucks analyzes and demonstrates his subtle but scorching solo on “Midnight in Harlem,” off of Tedeschi Trucks Band’s acclaimed 2011 record, Revelator. In it, he highlights the influence of Indian classical music, and particularly sarod player Ali Akbar Khan, on his own playing. The lead is “melodic but with Indian-classical inflections,” flourishes that Trucks says are integral to his playing: It’s a jazz and jam-band mentality of “dangling your feet over the edge of the cliff,” says Trucks, and going outside whatever mode you’re playing in.
Throughout the episode, Trucks details his live and studio set ups (“As direct as I can get it”), shares advice for learning slide and why he never uses a pick, and ponders what the future holds for collaborations with Warren Haynes.
Credits
Producer: Jason Shadrick
Executive Producers: Brady Sadler and Jake Brennan for Double Elvis
Engineering Support by Matt Tahaney and Matt Beaudion
Video Editor: Addison Sauvan
Graphic Design: Megan Pralle
Special thanks to Chris Peterson, Greg Nacron, and the entire Volume.com crew.
A 6L6 power section, tube-driven spring reverb, and a versatile array of line outs make this 1x10 combo an appealing and unique 15-watt alternative.
Supro Montauk 15-watt 1 x 10-inch Tube Combo Amplifier - Blue Rhino Hide Tolex with Silver Grille
The two-in-one “sonic refractor” takes tremolo and wavefolding to radical new depths.
Pros: Huge range of usable sounds. Delicious distortion tones. Broadens your conception of what guitar can be.
Build quirks will turn some users off.
$279
Cosmodio Gravity Well
cosmod.io
Know what a wavefolder does to your guitar signal? If you don’t, that’s okay. I didn’t either until I started messing around with the all-analog Cosmodio Instruments Gravity Well. It’s a dual-effect pedal with a tremolo and wavefolder, the latter more widely used in synthesis that , at a certain threshold, shifts or inverts the direction the wave is traveling—in essence, folding it upon itself. Used together here, they make up what Cosmodio calls a sonic refractor.
Two Plus One
Gravity Well’s design and control set make it a charm to use. Two footswitches engage tremolo and wavefolder independently, and one of three toggle switches swaps the order of the effects. The two 3-way switches toggle different tone and voice options, from darker and thicker to brighter and more aggressive. (Mixing and matching with these two toggles yields great results.)
The wavefolder, which has an all-analog signal path bit a digitally controlled LFO, is controlled by knobs for both gain and volume, which provide enormous dynamic range. The LFO tremolo gets three knobs: speed, depth, and waveform. The first two are self-explanatory, but the latter offers switching between eight different tremolo waveforms. You’ll find standard sawtooth, triangle, square, and sine waves, but Cosmodio also included some wacko shapes: asymmetric swoop, ramp, sample and hold, and random. These weirder forms force truly weird relationships with the pedal, forcing your playing into increasingly unpredictable and bizarre territories.
This is all housed in a trippy, beautifully decorated Hammond 1590BB-sized enclosure, with in/out, expression pedal, and power jacks. I had concerns about the durability of the expression jack because it’s not sealed to its opening with an outer nut and washer, making it feel more susceptible to damage if a cable gets stepped on or jostled near the connection, as well as from moisture. After a look at the interior, though, the build seems sturdy as any I’ve seen.
Splatterhouse Audio
Cosmodio’s claim that the refractor is a “first-of-its-kind” modulation effect is pretty grand, but they have a point in that the wavefolder is rare-ish in the guitar domain and pairing it with tremolo creates some pretty foreign sounds. Barton McGuire, the Massachusetts-based builder behind Cosmodio, released a few videos that demonstrate, visually, how a wavefolder impacts your guitar’s signal—I highly suggest checking them out to understand some of the principles behind the effect (and to see an ’80s Muppet Babies-branded keyboard in action.)
By folding a waveform back on itself, rather than clipping it as a conventional distortion would, the wavefolder section produces colliding, reflecting overtones and harmonics. The resulting distortion is unique: It can sound lo-fi and broken in the low- to mid-gain range, or synthy and extraterrestrial when the gain is dimed. Add in the tremolo, and you’ve got a lot of sonic variables to play with.
Used independently, the tremolo effect is great, but the wavefolder is where the real fun is. With the gain at 12 o’clock, it mimics a vintage 1x10 tube amp cranked to the breaking point by a splatty germanium OD. A soft touch cleans up the signal really nicely, while maintaining the weirdness the wavefolder imparts to its signal. With forceful pick strokes at high gain, it functions like a unique fuzz-distortion hybrid with bizarre alien artifacts punching through the synthy goop.
One forum commenter suggested that the Gravity Well effect is often in charge as much the guitar itself, and that’s spot on at the pedal's extremes. Whatever you expect from your usual playing techniques tends to go out the window —generating instead crumbling, sputtering bursts of blubbering sound. Learning to respond to the pedal in these environments can redefine the guitar as an instrument, and that’s a big part of Gravity Well’s magic.
The Verdict
Gravity Well is the most fun I’ve had with a modulation pedal in a while. It strikes a brilliant balance between adventurous and useful, with a broad range of LFO modulations and a totally excellent oddball distortion. The combination of the two effects yields some of the coolest sounds I’ve heard from an electric guitar, and at $279, it’s a very reasonably priced journey to deeply inspiring corners you probably never expected your 6-string (or bass, or drums, or Muppet Babies Casio EP-10) to lead you to.