It's a mouthful for sure! These pedals grew out of my love for all things distorted and dirty in electric guitar-ness. I spent months auditioning various fuzz circuits and tweaking things to my liking. The Gear 7 is a germanium/jfet hybrid fuzz that is sweet and gnarly. It is comprised of a twin germanium transistor fuzz circuit followed by a jfet clean boost/preamp. The vintage voiced fuzz provides great, over-the-top mayhem as well as subtler, overdrive tones throughout the range of settings. The controls are Volume, Fuzz and Bias. The first two are fairly self explanatory but the Bias controls the voltage to the second, distorting, transistor. Originally intended to help keep the temperature sensitive germanium transistors in their ideal operating range, the bias control is also a cool tone shaping option to have. Counter clockwise yields a brasher, brighter sound and clockwise shows a more compressed, creamy aspect to the tone. The addition of the clean boost insures there is enough gain to push the front end of an amp or other pedals. The pedal is powered with either a battery or standard boss style 9v dc. It is daisy chain friendly.
For those with the preference, the Gear 7 can also be made using two matched silicon transistors. The silicon have higher gain, more sustain and a more scooped eq. They are also not sensitive to temperature like germanium transistors. One isn't necessarily better than the other but they are different. The standard Gear 7 comes with germanium so if you'd like silicon, please specify when ordering. There is no additional charge.
The enclosures are chemically etched and then lacquered (because everyone knows lacquer sounds better ;^). Then they are sanded and buffed to a high gloss to really bring out the colors. Hand made right here in the USA! Demo video is coming soon.
Rock On,
Joe