Following in the style of their Germanium Fuzz, Benson Amps has unveiled a brand-new pedal today called the Germanium Boost. Both of these pedals are designed to self-regulate bias for sound consistency, but each pedal goes about that process a bit differently.
While the Germanium Fuzz uses temperature control to keep its NOS germanium transistor biased, the new Germanium Boost uses a voltage-controlled error-correction circuit to achieve the same effect. In fact, the company initially tried this approach with the Fuzz, it just didn't work as desired.
"It turns out that [the error-correction circuit] was perfect for achieving a germanium clean boost that, like our fuzz, is impervious to component drift, leakage, and temperature," writes Benson Amps on its website. Benson also mentions that this pedal can be used as a convincing linear boost due to expanded input headroom (to decrease unwanted input distortion) and increased input impedance (to prevent thinned-out bass frequencies).
"Our goal," says designer Christopher Benson, "was that people could utilize the highly-regarded sound of the germanium transistor to colour their sound and boost their signal without worry that it would unpredictably ruin a gig or recording session."
The new high-headroom, full-range, clean Germanium Boost is available now for $199 USD right here on Reverb.