Silktone gives the Germanium Fuzz Face a scientific makeover courtesy of an always-on 3 Digit Active Bias Monitor

Readers may have noted last year - that while I admired the innovation of the Benson Amps Germanium Fuzz - I mentioned it was rather useless for me as I really like to use the Bias control on my Germanium Fuzzes all the time - for different voicings, characters and textures. So when I encountered the Silktone Fuzz it hit me as exactly the kind of Germanium Fuzz that I would love - in fact I pretty much bought it on sight! (actually just checked the one RJ Ronquillo demo very quickly before ordering).

Apart from size and orientation - this is pretty much the perfect Germanium Fuzz Face for me - using those really zingy NOS Soviet Transistors and having all the controls at my disposal that I would want - including Classic and Raw playback modes - where Classic is your Traditional Fuzz Face voicing, and Raw changes the bias ratio and removes bass filtering for fatter and more boosted tones.

Controls - Volume / Output, Fuzz / Transistor Gain, Cleanup (same as guitar volume cleanup), Bias : 0.00 to 9.00, Mode : Classic / Raw.

Active Bias Monitor / Metering

The 3-Digit Readout shows you the real-time voltage passing through the Transistors - owing to the variable nature of said transistors the voltage obviously fluctuates all the time around the value you have dialled in.

Silktone handily give us 5 reference points for classic Fuzz Face tones and textures :

• GATED : ~1.10
• VINTAGE : ~2.50
• SWEET SPOT : ~4.50
• FAT FUZZ : ~6.50
• STICKY FUZZ : ~8:00

There’s also an input buffer onboard - here referred to as a input debuffer - which means you have some freedom of placing this Fuzz in different parts of your pedal-chain.

All in all I’m pretty excited about this. The Benson Fuzz Innovation was cool - but this is so much cooler for me! I guess there will be two camps forming here - one pro Benson and one pro the Silktone approach.

I only have around 70 Fuzz Faces in the reference collection to-date and this is surely going to be the most fun one of all - I mean it’s got an interactive readout! Purists will hate it because they don’t like anything but the basics in the circuit - those guys can carry on buying those monstrous mic stand discuses. I’m firmly planted in the Silktone camp now!

Considering the patent pending innovation this seems very reasonably priced at $250 - as mentioned I snapped up mine pretty much on-sight from the Silktone Webstore.

Are any of my regular fuzz heads tempted here?