Drunk Beaver's Pedal Drop #24 - the Uzhhorod Xtortion significantly improves on Boss's XT-2 Xtortion circuit

I got my Boss XT-2 Xtortion around the same time as the MZ-2 Digital Metalizer - a few years back now - and always felt that the Xtortion pedal never quite reached its full potential. There was something strange about those controls - where you could kind of feel the potential of that circuit - but never quite get to the best version of it. Unlike the MZ-2 which was already every way brilliant!

My good friend Vitalii also harboured similar sentiments when he first encountered the Boss Xtortion, and he has massively rehabilitated said circuit - and given it the finishing touches it needed to finally reach it full potential!

On the XT-2 the knobs were labelled - Level, Contour, Punch, and Distortion.

While on this new and improved Uzhhorod Xtortion we have a slightly different arrangement of Post Mid, Drive, Level, and Pre Mid - where the two Mid controls are fulfilling the Contour and Punch tone-shaping - but in a much much better way!

So it has overall the same main structure of a Boss XT-2 - but with all the filters changed, gain stage values changed and secret NOS Tesla Si diodes deployed instead of LEDs. The circuit has a variable mid-boost gyrator before the gain stage and Vitalii completely changed all frequencies and Q to his own taste.

Then we have the OpAmp gain stage (also with altered LP/HP filtering), next the clipping diodes and fixed bass and high mids boost (both were changed also). And finally there’s a mid cut/boost filter (all values changed from the original + mid boost doesn’t cut too much treble compared to the XT-2). All this made it quite the wild thrash metal machine, where it can cover a whole lot of different sounds. As the below demo illustrates.

The Pre-gain stage filters are specifically set to : 722Hz, Q : 7.03 (variable boost) and 1.6kHz, Q : 2.86 (fixed). While Post-gain stage fixed filters are at : 3.3kHz, Q : 1.49, 86Hz, Q : 2.54 and variable mids scoop, flat mids filtering.

So if you’ve ever encountered an XT-2 Xtortion and quite liked it, but felt it was missing a certain something - then this should most definitely be your weapon of choice. I always thought someone would need to modify and rehabilitated this pedal eventually - and Vitalii has done the stellar job on this that was needed!

25 units of the Uzhhorod Xtortion will go up for sale on the Drunk.Beaver.Rocks Webstore as soon as you see this article - priced @ £175. I am something of a Boss completist - so this is something of an essential for me. I’m glad that someone has finally ’fixed’ the Xtortion!