The Horned Sage, is a unique Germanium fuzz that draws inspiration and reimagines two of the best vintage fuzz boxes ever, the Tone Bender MKIV and the Burns Buzzaround.
Both these fuzzes need no introduction. The Tone Bender has been used by Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page and Jeff Beck amongst countless others, and the Buzzaround has most notably been used by King Crimson’s Robert Fripp.
What the Horned Sage offers, is a unique rethinking of these designs. Tonally has more aggression, but also offers a wider range in its fuzz control, so it’s a lot more controllable and versatile. The Tone Bender offers 2 different fuzz tones at each end of the fuzz control. The Horned Sage covers those tones at the final quarter of the sweep and bellow that it reduces the fuzz intensity too. It never gets totally clean, but you can combine the fuzz control with your instrument’s volume control to clean it up.
The tone control is retouched to make it too more usable. You won’t find a position that gets too harsh, not even at its trebliest setting. All the range of the tone control is usable.
Generally speaking, the Horned Sage has a bigger tone with more low end and low mids, it is a bit louder, and a lot more versatile.
TECHNICAL DETAILS
The Horned Sage is of course a Germanium fuzz box. Instead of the 3 transistor & 1 germanium diode combo the vintage pedals use, the Horned Sage uses 4 germanium transistors and a germanium diode.
The transistors used will be according to availability since germanium transistors are hard to obtain. Initially, again depending on availability, NPN germanium transistors have been used (MP37A & MP38A), so it can be powered by using a standard power supply and can be daisy chained to other effects with no issues. However, the use of a PP3 battery is highly recommend since it is a cleaner power source and provides a better tone. The pedal’s power consumption is 3.92 mA, so a single battery will last countless hours if you unplug your instrument from the input jack socket that acts as a battery on/off switch.
The rest of the materials used are of the highest quality available:
- Omeg/Piher/... Potentiometers
- Quality footswitch with gold plated lugs
- Vishay metal film resistors
- Vishay, Panasonic, WIMA & CDE capacitors
- Lead free (Sn 99 / Cu0,7 / Ag 0,3) solder
It is Professionally powder coated with screen printed graphics and is built using a stripboard to resemble the fuzz boxes of yesteryears.
