Benson Amps Germanium Boost Pedal

When designing the temperature controlled fuzz, Benson tried some weird approaches. One thing was utilizing a voltage controlled error correcting circuit to bias a single germanium transistor. It ultimately didn’t work for the fuzz, since that circuit is comically sensitive to transistor gain attributes.

It turns out it was perfect for achieving clean boost, resulting in the Benson Amps Germanium Boost Pedal, which, like the fuzz, is impervious to component drift, leakage, and temperature. Benson also increased the input headroom (even a normal guitar signal will drive a germanium transistor into unwanted input distortion without some tweaks) and increased the input impedance (a BJT transistor would normally thin out bass frequencies and interact negatively with whatever flows into it).

The result is a germanium clean boost where you can utilize a germanium transistor without the weird artifacts that were previously accepted as part of the deal - temperature sensitivity, drift, and suboptimal input impedance and headroom.

It takes about 10 seconds when the boost is first powered up for the error correction circuit to bias the germanium transistor. After that it gets interesting. You can hear how it makes guitar signals sound more musical... even when set at the same volume as the bypassed tone. It seems to bring out the attack of the guitar while simultaneously smoothing out notes, like a compressor, but different. It's hard to describe. It appears to cut the bad parts of a signal and enhance the good. It is killer on bass. It helps acoustic guitar pickups sound more natural. And of course it’ll push your amp into a frenzy.

POWER SUPPLY

This pedal is for use only with a 9VDC Boss-style center negative power supply. There is space for a battery which is activated when a cable is plugged into the input, and there is no power supply plugged into the DC jack.

Please do not subject this pedal to more than 9VDC or the pedal or power supply could be destroyed.