Benson Amps Releases Germanium Boost Auto-Biasing Clean Linear Boost

Chris Benson’s Germanium Boost is actually his first attempt at creating the Auto-Biasing Germanium Fuzz. The first attempt consisted of using a voltage-controlled error correction circuit to bias a single Germanium Transistor. It ultimate didn’t work well enough for the Fuzz - which is overly sensitive to transistor gain. While it worked brilliantly as a Single Germanium Transistor Clean Boost - which is what we have here. It takes approximately 10 seconds for the self-biasing circuit to work its magic - so a relatively rapid onset - just count 10 Mississippis before you start playing!

The clean boost function of a Germanium Fuzz has long been utilised and the Boss BD-2 has a similar trick - when you totally dial down the gain. You also have RangeMasters - which are a slightly different beast of Germanium Boost - and in fact do colour the signal.

Chris Benson’s new Germanium Boost is really an incredible clean / non-colouring linear boost - which delivers clean amp-like amplification. I’ve long been a fan of a different kind of Germanium Boost - which started for me with the Spaceman Mercury IV Germanium Harmonic Boost, and where I know deploy Thorpy’s excellent Heavy Water Dual Boost for the same purpose. That sort of Boost - is a Harmonic Texturiser - which adds a further harmonic richness to your tone - which I don’t believe the Benson Germanium Boost does.

I’ve not featured the Benson Germanium Fuzz yet - as regardless of how clever it is, it doesn’t fully appeal to me - it’s form factor is rather larger than it needs to be - it could also have been vertically aligned for more pedalboard-friendly applications surely. While I use a Fuzz’s Bias control as a further tone and texture shaper - where you can drastically impact the output of a Fuzz by changing the Bias values. Having an Auto-Biasing circuit totally removes all that flexibility and versatility - yes it delivers a more consistent tone - but it does so at a cost. And I would much rather have the versatility of an external Bias control than the convenience of an auto-biasing circuit. King Tone Fuzzes deploy a clever manual Biasing system - with indicator lights at optimal values - which is another preferred approach for me.

As for the Germanium Boost - of course it is an exceptional Linear Clean Boost - which seems to have been beautifully calibrated for optimal function in that application. And as a Clean Boost it is surely a fantastic choice, and reasonably priced at $199. It’s still sort of under consideration for me - while I don’t feel it could step in for my Heavy Water or Mercury IV - which makes it a lesser priority for me.

I know a few of my readers have ordered one already - I would of course be delighted to hear of your first hand experience - and what successful usage scenarios you might have discovered.