Benson Amps Deep Sea Diver Fuzz-Echo Pedal

Over the past 3(!) years, Benson have been working with their longtime friend and associate Jessica Dobson from the Seattle band Deep Sea Diver to take her signature sound (fuzz and delay) and put it into one box - the Benson Amps Deep Sea Diver. Benson started with a silicon three-transistor fuzz variant (kind of a deranged mashup of mk1.5 and mk2) and tweaked it into oblivion. Its two main controls (bias and gate) cover a wide range of sounds from aggressive treble booster to thick, dark textured fuzz to the gated skronky sounds often found in the Deep Sea Diver discography. These controls are interactive and change the EQ and distortion profile with even small tweaks... a lot of fun to be had!

The echo is from a tweaked data-sheet PT2399 that is perfectly tuned to the fuzz side and has the standard time, feedback and level (echo) controls. Holding down the footswitch will send the echo into sustained feedback at some settings, which, in conjunction with a short delay time, is a sound that can be found all over DSD records.

One unique feature of the Fuzz-Echo is the ability to change the fuzz and echo orders. This is done by powering the pedal on while the footswitch is depressed. The LED will be green if fuzz is before echo, and orange if echo is before fuzz. The fuzz/echo does not care where it is in the signal chain, or what guitar (or bass, or synth) is used. It will have a small amount of hiss, even on "cleaner" settings.

"When Benson first asked me what I wanted out of a pedal, I asked if he could smash together my favorite fuzz tones and vintage echos. One of my favorite pedal configurations has always been running my echos & delays before my dirt pedals to get unorthodox sounds. So, we started there and it morphed into a pedal than became bigger and wider than what we initially had imagined.

To call this simply a ‘gated fuzz pedal with an echo feature’ would be an injustice to its essence! Beyond the splatty gated sounds, I wanted a fuzz that could get wooly and straight forward, or shake hands with my favorite gauzy My Bloody Valentine textures. I wanted it to clean up nice and work as a treble booster for my guitar solos, or sound like a foreign landscape of oscillation and interrupting textures. Simply put, it has become the most interesting and versatile pedal on my board.” - Jessica Dobson

POWER SUPPLY

This pedal is for use only with a 9VDC Boss-style center negative power supply. There is no battery. Please do not subject this pedal to more than 9VDC or the pedal or power supply could be destroyed. This pedal draws less than 100 mA and will work well with most supplies.

BENSON AMPS DEEP SEA DIVER FEATURES:

• Fuzz/echo pedal developed with Jessica Dobson of Deep Sea Diver
• Bias and gate controls cover a wide range of sounds from aggressive treble boost to thick and dark textured fuzz to more gated skronky sounds
• Echo derived from a tweaked data-sheet PT2399 perfectly tuned to the fuzz side with time, feedback, and level controls
• Holding footswitch sends echo into sustained feedback
• Fuzz and echo order are switchable for advanced tonal possibilities