The Ampère Fuzz (named after André-Marie Ampère, who is also pictured on the pedal) sounds positively electric. It is a gated silicon fuzz with a lot of bite (thanks to a full low and high end) that is inspired by a somewhat obscure Chinese pedal (which may or may not be a rip-off of a different circuit) with a handful of modifications. Sounds robust with a low gate setting, sounds really freaky at high gate settings. Requires a 9V DC power supply.
PEDALS MADE: 2
CURRENT STATUS: OUT OF STOCK
FUTURE AVAILABILITY: MAYBE
I had wanted to bring in a new design to my pedals, something different from the usual icons that I'd been using for some time and that started to feel a bit too JHS-like. Inspired by my old "vintage edition" pedals, I used an Ampère portrait from Wikipedia, kept the plain metal enclosures and used the classic old-style knobs (hard to get these times, they're always sold out at my suppliers).
This was originally made as a gift for Ryan and Steve from 60 Cycle Hum, but it sounded so great that I wanted one for myself as well. I made another one, but that second one was plagued with multiple problems that took me a long (long!) time to troubleshoot. Just as I was ready to throw it away and build a new one, replacing an electrolytic capacitor fixed the problem. The first one went to Ryan and Steve, and I kept the one that had caused me so much trouble.
Tags: 2N3904, fuzz, Si transistors