RAGING GERMANIUM RAPIDS 

Pronounced "rivers", rvrs delivers a range of destroyed transistor dirt- from dark drive tones to punishing distortion with hefty low end content!

INSPIRATION:  We traced Boss Tone distortion units, the pedal steel versions with bigger capacitors and higher gain transistors.  These late stage Nashville versions resulted in loads of sustain and a mountain of bass content, but were fraught with high frequency noise and prone to oscillations.  Improved for guitar pedal use and given a germanium mod, rvrs was born!

CIRCUIT SCIENCE:  The core circuit follows Boss Tone topology, using NPN and PNP transistors and rectifier diodes for clipping.  A strategically placed low pass filter removes AM radio and high frequency nonsense, while power supply filtering is updated to modern standards.  The gem of the circuit is the "Percolator" mod- a low gain/low leakage PNP germanium transistor! 

SOUND:  The best of a Boss Tone, the special sauce of a Percolator.

This Frankenstein mashup of silicon and germanium transistors can be brutally destructive at the extreme attack setting, yet bassy-smooth at the low setting.

Even the thickest distortion settings can clean up by dialing back your guitar volume knob- yeah, it's dynamic like that!

Another neat-o feature is how responsive rvrs is to pickup selection.  Treble/bridge pickups are 70s rock smoke clouds; neck/rhythm pickups are fuzzy, loose and thick!

 

Austere design, esoteric nomenclature.

How about some bass for low end lovers!