Fairfield Circuitry The Unpleasant Surprise Experimental Fuzz/Gate Pedal

Manufacturer's description

Reminisce about the time you got your shoulder caught in the reciprocating saw while this unit destroys your slick jazz lines.

The fruit of an oddball circuit, hanging there awkwardly by some parasitic effect. Tweaked, bended and shoe-horned to optimize it’s stench, it’s unpleasance. The time has come to turn all dynamics to shit. Strangely, it feels very natural.

As The Unpleasant Surprise turns your playing style upside down, you’ll be thankful for its ability to push you outside the box, outside your comfort zone, all the while retaining the essence of what is played. The artifacts created by this pedal are strange, harsh and unusual but never seem misplaced or out of context.

PHYSICALS

• true true bypass
• 1/4" mono input/output jacks
• 2.1mm barrel DC connector
• 2.5" x 4.4" enclosure dimensions

USING THE UNPLEASANT SURPRISE

The VOLUME control is self-explanatory. Unity gain is around noon but who cares. Use it to slam your amp or the next pedals in line. Turn it down if the anguish is overwhelming.

The ONSET control affects interstage gain, which happens to mimic an inverse gate threshold. Turn it up for more saturation, longer sustain. Down for sputtery ad-lib farts.

• T Simple output treble cut.
• G Affects amplifier bias. Open or Saturated. Allows variations in distortion grain. Note: the difference becomes less noticeable as the ONSET is turned up.
• C Feedforward. Crushes your signal to shit. ONSET controls the amount of compression.

NOTES ON POWERING

The Unpleasant Surprise was designed to operate and sound good using your typical center negative, regulated 9–9.6 VDC power supply. Running it at higher voltages is not desirable nor recommended. There is no battery connection inside the pedal. Always check your power supply for proper voltage and polarity before connecting.