Champion Leccy's The Dunsh is a unique Fuzz / Distortion Pedal evolved from a massively modified single Big Muff Gain Stage

There is a long and storied legacy to Champion Leccy’s The Dunsh - as founder Woolly explains here :

"The first ‘Dunsh’ was a modification I made to one section of the Black Russian Big Muff circuit that I used in the Gett and the Bloody Gett. It was a switch to add amp-smashingly loud, noisy and bottom-endy fuzziness."

"It made a return in a slightly modified form as the second half of the Canny Fettle Boost a couple of years ago."

UPDATE - It seems like I somewhat misconstrued the meaning of those two sentences above. I assumed that Woolly meant that he modified just one of the 4 stages of the Muff - and left the others intact. While in actuality he extracted and modified just a single gain stage of that pedal - so it’s not really a Big Muff related circuit at all.

Woolly explained it to me as follows :

"For this new pedal I’ve taken that single transistor stage and built a bunch of stuff around it, including the gating and the Baxandall EQ, The other stages are opamp gain stages and don’t resemble the Muff at all. There are actually 4 opamp stages - the first one is the gain, after that first opamp stage is the single transistor (the Dunsh transistor) adapted from the Canny Fettle and Bloody Gett before that."

"That part of the circuit is responsible for the gating and the bias, as well as the second footswitch hi gain boost. After that there are 3 more opamp gain stages - including the EQ controls."

The revised Dunsh was originally supposed to be part of Champion Leccy’s End of Days Fuzz Project - while Woolly didn’t feel it felt like it fully fitted in with the spirit of that - and so it’s more it’s own stand-alone project really.

Controls - Level (Output), Bottom End Cut / Boost, Top End Cut / Boost, Bias (Character), Dunsh Level, Bottom End Freq Focus : Lo / Hi / Mid, Gate : Asymmetric / Symmetric / Off, Top End Freq Focus : Lo / Hi / Mid, Fuzz Gain, Dunsh Boost Footswitch, Engage / Bypass Footswitch.

As I stated in the title this started off as a slightly Modded Black Russian Muff in the beginning with an additional full-on loaded extra ’Dunsh’ Gain Stage / Boost. It also has some very clever EQ controls - where you can cut or boost both Bottom and Top End - and refine via selecting specific frequency clusters within that range.

The end result being a more full-on sustaining louder brasher version of Big Muff with a significant amount of shapeability.

Champion Levvy have always been about unique circuit designs - in terms of delivering something like no one else does - experimental and yet musically smart at the same time. There are so many 3-knob Muffs out there, and Muffs with 4 controls even - that this 9 Controls and Dual Footswitches is deliberately distinct and different and adds a worthy new entry into this overall genre.

I have several Big Muffs at the 1590-BB Vertical Enclosure size - so this is a good size fit for me. It actually comes in three colour variants currently - Grey as pictured, then Pink and Yellow colourways also. Pricing is at $230 and equivalent and available now via the Champion Leccy Webstore. Where I will be hoping to get hold of one via my good friend Andy Birkitt’s Break the Machine Pedal Boutique.

Woolly is another successful Brit Abroad - and it’s about time I leant him some more support.

I don’t have too many Black Russian variants in my 100+ Big Muff collection - so this will surely be a welcome addition!