The circuit board reflects a thoughtful approach to circuit layout and execution, with components arrayed neatly on a through-hole board. The 9V battery, if you choose to use one, fits tidily between the footswitch housing and the foam mounted on the enclosure interior. The knobs, meanwhile, have a smooth but firm resistance that enables precise adjustments and prevents accidental changes. The whole feels like a piece of gear that will survive real and rigorous touring.
Thermonuclear Expressions
In the vintage-voiced doom mode, the Boris sounds most authentically Sovtek-like at treble-y tone settings. And it’s at these trebly settings that the pedal feels most airy and responsive. To my ears, Boris is neither as buzzy, nor as detailed as the “bubble font” Sovtek and two excellent “Civil War” clones I used as reference. But I really love the toppy, more searing side of Muff circuits. And players that like the Gilmour or desert-rock, power-haze personality of Russian Muffs might interpret the same lack of top end effervescence as smoothness—a texture many Muff fans relish. At most equivalent settings it seems to have slightly less output, too. But that is no bad thing, and you needn’t fear the Boris being underpowered. It may be a more reserved Muff, but it is hardly quiet.
Ratings
Pros:Sturdy, thoughtful construction. Smooth Muff-like textures that work well at high volumes with dirty amps.
Cons:
Can sound highly compressed and less complex in nuclear mode.
Tones:
Ease of Use:
Build/Design:
Value:
Street:
$199
Nordstrand Rocket Surgeon Boris
nordstrandaudio.com
In nuclear mode, the Boris is much louder. And a lot of players will get out over a barreling drummer or bass player via the dB bump alone. Nuclear mode’s EQ profile definitely adds midrange along with the volume boost, as advertised. But the resulting EQ curve tends to sound relatively flat, and the effect of that EQ profile varies significantly depending on your guitar, amp, and musical setting. My Stratocaster’s bridge pickup, for instance, thrived in nuclear mode—sounding smooth and present for leads and detailed when playing chords. Fender single-coils also bring out the most unique and most pronounced effect of the midrange boost in nuclear mode—a subtle cocked-wah texture that becomes more pronounced as you roll up the tone control. If you’re a Mick Ronson fan looking for a meatier fuzz texture than an Mk I Tone Bender, the Boris is a great place to start.
Playing chords with humbuckers is a less ideal fit. Here the Boris can make the leveled EQ profile sound compressed and even claustrophobic. And picking dynamics—never a super-strong suit of Muff-type stomps—suffer at all but the highest tone settings. Certain humbucker lead tones are a delight, however. Boris can tame a too-hot or ice-picky bridge humbucker. Neck pickup lead tones sound both focused and wooly—a perfect vehicle for hazy syntheses of Disraeli Gears and Welcome to Sky Valley.
One upside to Boris’ nuclear tone profile is that the smoother, less gainy nature translated well to bass applications. It’s a fair bet that Nordstand Audio’s extensive history as a builder of basses and at least one bass-centric effect may have paid dividends here.
The Verdict
Boris underscores how wide and varied the Big Muff template can be. It seems tuned for players who like a Big Muff to be predictably even-tempered and smooth at high volume. (Gilmour fans circa 1994 and stoner rock acolytes are likely to be psyched). Muff fans that prefer a Sovtek with tone turned to 10, or the laser heat of early “triangle”-style Muffs, may be inclined to look elsewhere. But there are copious audible treats to be found in the Rocket Surgeon circuit—regardless of your Big Muff biases.
While working for Ampeg in the late '60s, Dan Armstrong designed a "see-through" guitar and short- scale bass with interchangeable pickups. This helped ignite the replacement- pickup revolution. Fans of these Lucite axes include Death from Above's Jesse F. Keeler, shown here playing one of his four Armstrong basses at Riot Fest 2017 in Chicago.
All the pickup combinations are in phase, so if you're looking for out-of-phase tones, this arrangement may not be your cup of tea—at least not without some mods to yield these additional sounds. Armstrong's circuit works on all guitars with three pickups, including those with humbuckers.
For this configuration, we're using stock Stratocaster tone controls: the middle and neck pickups each have an individual tone pot, while the bridge pickup has none. However, you can further enhance the wiring's sonic flexibility by putting different cap values on each tone control— something I'll elaborate on in a moment.
The switching matrix. The chart below shows the different combinations offered by this wiring. Here's how to interpret the letters: U means the switch is in the up position, D stands for down, and C indicates the bridge pickup's 3-way on/on/on switch is in the center position.
This wiring's switching matrix is challenging to operate, and you'll need some time to get familiar with the three switches and how they work together. I know I couldn't play a guitar wired this way onstage without a printed operation manual describing all the different possibilities, but if you want to squeeze as many sounds as possible out of a Strat, this is your ticket. This is a complex circuit that requires solid soldering and wiring skills, and isn't a beginner's project.
The shopping list. You can use your stock Stratocaster pickguard for this mod. Simply remove the 5-way switch and drill three holes to install the switches where the 5-way switch was previously located. Of course, the slit that housed the original 5-way switch will be visible between the three new switches. If that doesn't seem appealing, buy a new pickguard that's not pre-drilled for the standard 5-way switch. This will look much cleaner.
Other than that, you only need a pair of 2-position DPDT on/on switches (for the middle and neck pickups), a single 3-position DP3T on/on/on switch (for the bridge pickup), and some wire. Rather than trying to save a few pennies on inferior budget switches, be sure to use high-quality units. Poorly constructed imports won't last long, and they produce all kinds of electronic and mechanical noise when you're operating them.
The wiring. Again, this isn't a beginner's project, so if you feel unsure about tackling such a complex circuit, I suggest hiring a pro to do this job for you—or at least starting with an easier mod to gain some experience.
If your pickups have a metal baseplate (like a Telecaster bridge pickup) and/or a metal cover (like a Telecaster neck pickup or a humbucker) that's connected to the pickup's ground, you need to break this connection and solder a new, dedicated ground wire to the metal part. If you don't do this, your pickups will produce all kinds of weird noises in series mode.
For this wiring, it's also important to connect the case for each of the three switches to ground. Depending on its design, the switch may have a solder tab for this. If not, you'll have to wrap a wire around the threaded part of the switch's bushing and solder it to ground on the other end.
Dan Armstrong's classic “super-strat" wiring yields 12 sounds from a standard 3-pickup Fender Strat.
Armstrong's original schematic has an additional 0.05 µF capacitor connected between the volume pot case and the wire coming from the tremolo claw. This wire grounds the strings when you touch them, and the 0.05 µF capacitor is meant to protect you from electrical shocks. This cap is optional—you can get all the circuit's switching functionality without it. In my opinion, a 0.05 µF cap isn't a good choice to prevent electrical shocks. For this task, I prefer a 0.001 µF (1 nF) cap with a minimum rating of 500 volts wired in parallel with a 220k resistor.
In the original wiring, Armstrong chose a 0.01 µF value for both tone caps, but feel free to use whatever value you prefer. Also, it's not a crime to use different values for each tone pot. For example, you could experiment with a 0.01 µF for the middle and a 6800 pF for the neck pickup. Because of the many wires in this circuit, I decided to follow Armstrong's original approach for drawing the schematic. With all those wires crossing each other, a typical schematic looks way too confusing.
That's it! We'll revisit this wiring in a future installment to implement some nice mods. But next time, we'll return to 4-conductor humbuckers and I'll show you how to determine which wire goes where, if you don't have the color-code scheme for the individual wires. And we'll do this without buying super-expensive gizmos like a pickup analyzer or a digital scope. Until then ... keep on modding!