Joel Korte Heralds End of an Era with Final 100 Unit Run of the Ayahuasca Trem-Fuzz

I really admired the Abracadabra Audio application process and validation and the warning that whomsoever sought to profiteer / price gouge from the Ayahuasca would be barred from the project for life with eternal shame and damnation! I have though still seen a few too many Ayahuasca's on sale on Reverb.com for well in excess of £1,000 equivalent - which is obviously a breach of contract. I will never let go of my #75 - if you ever come across that in the wild it will be because it has been pilfered!

For some reason I also overlooked the fact that Chris Bradford was involved in the design of the fuzz - an Os Mutantes Regulus VIII High Gain Fuzz Face variant - which Chris's Mini Wee Beaver Fuzz is/was also based on - one of my all-time favourite mini-fuzzes as featured several times on this site. In any case Joel and Chris combined the best aspects of the Gravitas with the best of the Wee Beaver Fuzz and added in a new super-versatile tone-stack. The Tremolo also differs from the Gravitas in having 2 NOS Vactrols (resistive opto-isolators) which give it an even more choppier feel.

Needless to say - this is one of my favourite all time fuzzes. I already had and loved the Gravitas - and Joel does some further internal electronic trickery to make the Fuzz work even better with the Tremolo and vice-versa - which cannot be achieved to the same extend by using the original Gravitas wit ANO fuzz e.g. say running a Wee Beaver Fuzz into a Gravitas.

I also somehow expected there to be more Ayahuasca's in the world - I didn't realise then that mine was from a run of just 10 units and that the first 10 runs / series consisted of just 10 units each. With the final chapter offering being comprised of as many as all those that had come before! Obviously the 100 were snapped up in seconds (15 mins) - the email arrived late on Saturday night for us in the UK - and I'm pretty sure most UK citizens would have not got to the order form in time even if they managed to see the email in a timely fashion. So I'm doubly grateful that I could participate at a more leisurely pace back in 2018. Note that only 100 were made as that was all that remained of the stock of Ayahuasca boards.

There was talk that there might be different devices coming through the Abracadabra collaboration, but it seems that said associations has now being decommissioned as such - possibly a new one will spring up when another suitable new prototype is ready to be put forward.

In any case I'm not going to regurgitate all of Gabriel Tanaka's very fine work - per his quite superb write-up on the Chase Bliss Audio Blog. I would have preferred a few more date stamps in the mix - but you cannot fault the quality or depth of his reporting - which is just the sort of thing that appeals to me - like a slightly more spaced out and elegant extrapolation of the Kit Rae Big Muff Page variety - fantastically rich in authentic detail!

I'm sad to see the Ayahuasca retired, while relieved at the same time that I was able to participate. I hope Joel and Gabriel collaborate again soon - after all it seems like that's Joel's favourite thing to do these days. We're obviously waiting for the Automatone CXM 1978 Reverb to materialise - in collaboration with Meris, while it seems that Joel has also got something cooking with his former mentor Zachary Vex! Add that to 5,000+ MOOD pedals sold to-date and around 1,000 Automatone Preamp MKII's - and it's quite evident that Chase Bliss Audio is on something of a roll at the moment ..