Hello Gearheads! Welcome back to another fun and fuzzy feature. Today, I have the wonderful pleasure of sharing with you all a unique fuzz pedal from the genius that is Chris Benson. The Germanium Fuzz is Benson’s take on what he calls a “pretty” fuzz, one that will take you back to the vintage tones many of us guitarists are hunting for with a few tricks up it’s sleeve… one of which could be considered straight up wizardry in the world of temperature sensitive fuzz circuits. More on that later!
Chris Benson is the owner and creator of Benson Amplification, a very popular Portland, Oregon based company who have been cranking out unique takes on favorite amplifier circuits while focusing on vintage tone with modern and very useful innovations. I’d absolutely love to check out one of their amps in the future.
Benson’s innovations have of course touched the pedal world with their fantastic line of boosts, drives, fuzzes and delays… and the Germanium Fuzz is a great circuit to showcase that spirit of modern use in a vintage minded world… Simple, elegant and useful. It might be said that the elephant in the room when it comes to vintage germanium transistor based circuits is the temperature sensitivities those sweet little juicy transistors exhibit. They’re much like humans in way, able to exist within a small margin of error, the goldilocks zone if you will. If it’s too hot or too cold, or even with some specific transistors, slight variations on the temperature seesaw make them unusable, mushy and essentially a turd of a pedal. Yep, it’s a frustrating bubble that can often make using germanium fuzzes impossible. Cue Chris Benson and his brilliant team… they created the first temperature stable system to be able to use germanium transistors! No external cooling units, no ice packs or freezer “time outs”… there’s internal cooling circuitry! It’s magic I tell ya!
The same ethos that marks the simple innovations Benson employs also reach the tone of the Germanium Fuzz. Three controls - Volume, Gain & Impedance make such a wide variety and shades of boost, drive and fuzz that it’s honestly rather surprising. Some of you who’ve kept up with my features over the years know that I’m a big proponent of simple but wide feature sets. I’ve never found much joy out of menu diving or shifting through tons of knobs or switches to make the tone that’s in my hand reach the speaker. The Germanium Fuzz hits it’s mark easily in that regard.
The Gain and Impedance controls work so well together to tailor a more saturated and gritty fuzz or a dryer more open drive tone. I found running either the gain lower and the impedance higher or the gain higher and impedance lower to create my favorite results. I definitely preferred the “in between” tones that you wouldn’t normally get out of a vintage style Fuzz Face, and using the volume knob on the guitar further accentuated this experience. The Germanium Fuzz cleans up great and in a very natural way, not at all like the super hyped treble poking roll-off that can happen with some circuits. You can absolutely tell Chris Benson voiced this fuzz to work in a wide variety of situations and genres rather than focusing on the (in my opinion…tired) SRV and Hendrix buzz worlds. Nothing wrong with the greats, but it’s truly refreshing to see pedals like this being made.
In the demo below I used the Germanium Fuzz on all the stringed instruments, including bass guitar and an ancient Silvertone Aristocrat that’s been modified with a rubber bridge conversion by Rueben Cox at Old Style Guitar Shop here in Los Angeles. The Germanium Fuzz held it’s own equally with the wide variety of frequencies in those instruments. As I mentioned above, I mainly focused on the “in between” tones and found brilliant clean, slightly breaking up, medium gain tones and ultimately more saturated tones in the solo sections. Most often a fuzz pedal brings a certain kind of mood or voice when writing material for these features and I was pleased with the places it took me. After all, what’s the point to all of this gear if we’re not making music with them!
Thanks for checking this Gearheads Feature on the Germanium Fuzz from Benson Amps. If you’d like to learn more about Benson Amps please do check out these sites for more information.
https://www.instagram.com/bensonamps/
Until next time Gearheads, please take a moment to Like, Subscribe & Share this Feature and I’ll see you all very soon!