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Germanium Distortion
RAGING GERMANIUM RAPIDS
Pronounced "rivers", rvrs delivers a range of destroyed transistor dirt- from dark drive tones to punishing distortion with hefty low end content!
INSPIRATION: We traced Bosstone distortion units, the pedal steel versions with bigger capacitors and higher gain transistors. These late stage Nashville versions resulted in loads of sustain and a mountain of bass content, but were fraught with high frequency noise and prone to oscillations. Improved for guitar pedal use and given a germanium mod, rvrs was born!
CIRCUIT SCIENCE: The core circuit follows Bosstone topology, using NPN and PNP transistors and rectifier diodes for clipping. A strategically placed low pass filter removes AM radio and high frequency nonsense, while power supply filtering is updated to modern standards. The gem of the circuit is the "Percolator" mod- a low gain/low leakage PNP germanium transistor!
SOUND: The best of a Bosstone, the special sauce of a Percolator.
This Frankenstein mashup of silicon and germanium transistors can be brutally destructive at the extreme attack setting, yet bassy-smooth at the low setting.
Even the thickest distortion settings can clean up by dialing back your guitar volume knob- yeah, it's dynamic like that!
Another neat-o feature is how responsive rvrs is to pickup selection. Treble/bridge pickups are 70s rock smoke clouds; neck/rhythm pickups are fuzzy, loose and thick!
Austere design, esoteric nomenclature.
October Audio rvrs Germanium Distortion