Hello Sailor Effects flexes its verve once more on its brand new super-sustaining ShipWreck Fuzzstortion

Joe Halliday’s latest ShipWreck FuzzStortion has been through quite the development journey. Initially based on the request of a friend to make a Higher Gain HSE pedal. It combines a JFET preamp section with some beautifully amp- and fuzz-like dynamics and characteristics - and produces rather exceptional long singing sustain.

It’s basically a discrete transistor style distortion - with an initial JFET preamp section to deliver more organic feel under the fingers. Then it hits something approximating a conditioning stage. The idea came from a Marshall amplifier cathode follower stage. Obviously the circuit has no relation to it but the concept and implementation is along very similar lines.

Next, we hit the main gain stage - where we have a super high gain Darlington transistor feeding a hard clipping diode stage. That’s what the middle switch is controlling. In the centre you have silicon asymmetrical, up is silicon/germanium asymmetrical & down is silicon symmetrical. I typically prefer the most harmonically searing setting - which is the Middle one, followed by the more vintage-sounding Up hybrid setting, and I don’t spend too much time on the Down smoother Silicon setting - as you don’t get the same full-on harmonics of the other modes.

Then last in the circuit block digram - we have the post gain tone control and master volume.

Controls - Volume, Clipping : Ge-Si Asymmetrical / Si Asymmetrical / Si Symmetrical, Gain, Tone.

Note that there are 2 internal trim-pots too - where you can fine-tune the Voltage Bias on the 2 main gain stages. Those have been optimised during the pedal build process, and should not need further refinement when you receive your pedal - but you have the option to play around with the Bias character should you wish - I frankly don’t recommend it.

Joe’s first instincts with the circuit was to make it in his usual fully unfettered and full-on full-flavoured manner. Where his friend then thought the output a little too much. So Joe wired up the circuit a little differently to slightly throttle back the max gain. That was the version of the circuit I first experienced - which felt dynamically a little bit Tone Bender in profile - with that somewhat wirier clipped profile.

After much deliberation, Joe then decided that actually he preferred his very original take on the circuit - and recalled those early pedals (including mine) to set them back to the original higher gain configuration - which involved re-inverting the 2 gain stages I believe. The result was indeed a more open sound fuzzstortion with more reach and volume, and with longer sustain - closer in profile to a Fuzz Face really. In the simplest of terms this sounds like a super-sustaining high gain Fuzz Face based distortion.