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
Recording console style drive and a flexible filter combine to yield full-spectrum filthiness.More First Look videos: https://bit.ly/FIrstLookSubscribe to PG'...
It's almost comically large, but this ingenious expansion on the Lovetone Big Cheese famously favored by Page, Shields, and Marr may be the only fuzz you'll ever want or need.
Impedance and blend controls expand an incredible array of distortion and fuzz sounds almost to the untouchable level. Huge bang for your buck.
Massive footprint. Impedance-control magic may not manifest if KGB isn't at the beginning of your pedalboard.
$299
Valco KGB Fuzz
valcofx.com
In an age when pedal dimensions are decreasing in inverse proportion to functionality and flexibility, the Valco KGB Fuzz looks monumentally large (and a lot like a piece of lab equipment from a CIA cold-war gizmo room).
Distributed by the folks at Eastwood Guitars, it's inspired by the Lovetone Big Cheese fuzz, a similarly large 4-knob fuzz famously used by Jimmy Page, the Edge, Gary Moore, Kevin Shields, Johnny Marr, and others in the late '90s and early aughts. (Bassists Bootsy Collins, Larry Graham, and Radiohead's Colin Greenwood are also fans—the latter reportedly uses it live for "The National Anthem.") KGB Designer Carl Cook says he's treasured his own Big Cheese since receiving it from his former record label in 1997. But he also wished it had more output and oomph, as well as the extra features and capabilities we see here on the Valco.
Recorded with an Audient iD44 into GarageBand with no EQ-ing, compression, or effects.
- Squier Jaguar Curtis Novak neck pickup into SoundBrut DrVa MkII and Ground Control Tsukuyomi boost pedals and an Anasounds Element reverb, then into both a 1976 Fender Vibrolux Reverb miked with a Royer R-121 and a Fender Rumble 200 1x15 miked with an Audix D6. KGB first bypassed, then cycling through voices (off, 1, 2, 3) with blend first at 50 percent, then 100 percent. Output at 10:30, tone and fuzz at minimum.
- Jaguar bridge pickup into same setup as clip 1. KGB first bypassed, then cycling through voices with blend at 100 percent, output at 9 o’clock, tone at noon, and fuzz at 1 o’clock.
- Squier Tele with Curtis Novak pickups (neck and bridge) into a Sound City SC30 miked with a Royer R-121.KGB first bypassed, then voice 1 with blend at 100 percent, output at 10 o’clock, tone and fuzz at noon, and impedance at 10k.
Quite the Charcuterie Board
The heft of the Canadian-made KGB's steel-and-aluminum enclosure, and the snugness with which the knobs, jacks, slider, toggle, and footswitch are fastened inspire confidence. When you pull up on the footswitch to reveal the two neatly wired and soldered circuit boards (one small, one moderately large), you might wonder if the extra space is intended to conceal a secret agent's pistol. Alas, KGB is just a cheeky acronym indicating adaptability with keyboards and bass as well as 6-strings. Circuit board components aren't visible without taking the unit apart. But Cook tells us the main clipping elements are a silicon diode and an NPN transistor wired as a diode.
The KGB control panel sports the output level, tone, and fuzz knobs you'd expect. But the rest of the interface is quite unique in form and function. Like the Big Cheese, it has a 4-position voice knob. In the "off" position, the pedal's tone knob is bypassed. Voice 1 engages the tone control with a midrange scoop at 1 kHz, availing Big Muff-like sounds and response. Voice 2 has what Valco calls a "more neutral EQ" with more mid emphasis. Voice 3 incorporates the same EQ as voice 2 but adds another gain stage and a bias shift in the preamp to yield a more Velcro-y, gated response at higher fuzz settings.
Along the left side of the unit is the wet/dry slider, a powerful addition that's unique for how handily it lets you adapt KGB to other instruments without sacrificing low end or fundamental clarity. It's also easy to manipulate with your foot. Among other things, it's fantastic for making things sound like you've got a second guitarist doubling your lines. (To take this sound to epic extremes you can set the blend to full wet and route the dry output and effected outputs to separate amps or the P.A.)
Impedance isn’t typically something we get super excited about … but here [it] actually becomes pretty frickin’ exciting.
There's no need to do any math to figure out which impedance settings work best. All that matters is whether you like how each setting sounds. As a general rule, lower impedances yield mellower, less pointed tones, and as you click toward the 1M mark the control increases and morphs the quantity and quality of the saturation. But different impedances alter much more than tone. With very little linearity, the Ω knob can affect attack, bloom, intensity, and decay in ways that are beautifully, chaotically unpredictable.
The Verdict
There's so much going on with the Valco KGB that it's difficult to describe it thoroughly in this limited space. But whether you're a jaded veteran or an abject beginner in the fuzz game, KGB could feasibly be any kind of fuzz you've ever wanted. Love thick Muff sounds? They're here. More of a Tone Bender player? Okey-doke. The twisted sounds of a Fuzz Factory? Check. But KGB is also a super characterful, straight-ahead distortion box—some of my favorite sounds emerged with fuzz at minimum.
The only bummer I encountered with the KGB was when I inserted it in my usual fuzz-box location on my own pedalboard, which is after my wah. KGB prefers to be at the beginning of your chain, and buffered bypasses within the signal path may render the Ω knob virtually useless. Though the Valco is big, with so many handy, adaptive features, you'll probably want to make space on your board to accommodate it. Or maybe you'll simply thrill to the unadulterated glory of playing it straight into an amp with your guitar and nothing else.
But even if you can't live without your fuzz being somewhere in the middle of your signal path, KGB serves up a wealth of exciting fuzz action. No matter what I played it with—from a Telecaster to a Jaguar or a Gretsch with Filter'Tron-style humbuckers, low-wattage, small-speaker amps, larger Fender combos, or British-style amps—the Valco became a dirt-box playground. It's going to be tough letting this one go back to the company!
