The Origin Story for the ThorpyFX Heavy Water 3-in-1 Boost
The second feature for ’Heavy Water Month’ concerns its provenance and how the pedal came to be!
The story starts all the way back in 2016 with Thorpy’s Chain Home Tremolo - his smart take on the choppy Vox Repeat Percussion. A common issue with early Tremolos was volume drop - perceived and actual, and an output typically under signal-chain unity, for which the remedy was to add a boost circuit - in order to raise the volume back up to optimal / usable levels.
The very first High Headroom Dane Smooth Boost therefore was on the Chain Home (using 2.9V Zener Diodes), albeit in not quite as High Headroom a fashion as it would evolve to onboard 2018’s Pete Honoré’s Signature The Dane Drive + Boost. At the origin point of that Thorpy and Danish Pete Collaboration - the early source inspirations were initially the Peacekeeper and Gunshot circuits - where Thorpy was looking to combine the best elements of each. The circuit was then partly inspired by a number of Pete’s favourite tones - from pedals such as the Greer Lightspeed and T-Rex Møller, before the project rather evolved an identity all of its own - with an entirely unique circuit construction. The main point of this project was to get the best out of Pete’s Vintage Tele - and the Chain-Home-derived High Headroom Smooth Boost with Low-End EQ was the best circuit for that particular task.
Much of the underpinnings for the Dane Smooth High-Headroom Boost were the same as for the Chain Home, with some modifications, including an even higher headroom Diode (3.3V Zener).
Afer the launch of the ThorpyFX The Dane - so many loved the boost-side of said pedal, that there was a clamour of requests for a stand-alone ’Dane Boost’. Thorpy of course never does things by halves - he’s always about getting the maximum versatility and utility out of a pedal, and just a single channel boost didn’t seem a significant enough proposition to warrant its own pedal.
However a 2-Channel Boost Pedal with a complementary harder clipping, slightly lower headroom, and most importantly - a somewhat grittier, more richly textured harmonic breakup would make for a very worthy boost pedal.
I had been using the Spaceman Mercury IV Germanium Harmonic Boost for a while by then - employing that as an always-on Tone Enhancing Harmonics Enriching subtle Boost. The ThorpyFX Heavy Water with its dual footswitches would give me a much more versatile dynamic playback experience - with its 3-in-1 capabilities - Smooth Boost, Harmonic Boost, and Vibrant pseudo-RangeMaster Boost with both sides deployed together.
I was initially slightly concerned that the Thorpy Germanium Diode solution might not be as richly textured as the Spaceman Germanium Transistor take - but I need not have worried, as the Heavy Water seemed to deliver even more Harmonic content. Those Harmonics deliver an incredible depth of richness to your core signal - and make everything sound better - fuzzes in particular.
I have both sides set relatively low - which means they combine superbly - but also don’t really ramp up the gain much at all - they just make everything sound better. And while the Germanium side is pretty much always on for me, it doesn’t combine optimally with every single pedal, but normally when the Germanium side doesn’t work that well, the Smooth Dane Boost is pretty much spot-on. I’ve not encountered a pedal yet that one or the other of those two boosts cannot enhance. And when you want a little more full-on flavour and saturation you hit both footswitches together - which delivers an impact not that dissimilar to a RangeMaster.
I genuinely use the Heavy Water all the time, and it’s become one of my all-time essential always-on tone-enhancing pedals.
Thorpy reports :
"Through experimentation it was clear that the addition of two Germanium diodes in the clipping circuit of the boost instead of the normal Silicon meant that the upper reaches of the boost clipped heavier. This was especially awesome when you ran the Silicon side into the heavier clipping side. Turning the Heavy water into a very amp-like drive that interacted with your amp just like a boost would"
For so much of pedal-building and circuit development we rely on the engineer's / designer's ears - and how honed they are to capturing and referencing specific frequencies, tonalities and textures. All of my favourite pedal builders make everything 'by ear', and when you buy into a particular builder's style of pedals - it's those ears that are doing most of the heavy lifting for the circuit's creation! Thorpy truly has a wonderful ear for tone, and he always seems to deploy the perfect style and format of tone stack for each occasion / application!
To find the perfect Diodes for the Boost Circuits - Thorpy simply uses a set of crocodile clips and his ears! He went through a whole slew of different Diode variant until he found the ones that sounded the best. These included bat46, bat41, 1n4148, 1n4001, Zeners of all values, and LEDs of various colours. Thorpy is so well organised that he has found alternative batches of identical sounding Diodes - which will seamlessly take the place of the current incumbents as and when they run out.
Stocks of the Mullard/Philips OA90 Germanium Diodes are very low, and of course Thorpy has a perfect Schottky replacement lined up already! This is the same for all vintage component pedal projects - you eventually run out of your stock of one reference, and need to find another identical sounding component to replace it. It's really all about how much you trust the ears of the builder! And Thorpy for sure has an innate highly tuned and trained auditory mastery!
The Heavy Water is a genuine 3-in-1 device as I employ it, and easily my favourite boost pedal currently on the market - there really is nothing quite like it out there at this very moment!
I wholly and totally recommend this Heavy Water Dual-Channel Boost - and even if you don't win this give-away - I feel you should still make it your priory to get one!
GPX-Branded Hardware April Give-Away
We've had a lot of entries in already, with USA residents somewhat overwhelmingly in the lead so far as regards numbers, followed by UK, Australia, Germany, France, and Canada. Weirdly very few from Scandinavia - where are you my Nordic brothers and sisters? And none yet from South America! And none from Japan yet either. I can't believe there aren't Thorpy fans in those territories too! Show yourselves!
It's fascinating watching the country stats roll in - and I'm hoping for an eventual full house of United Nations!
The [ENTRY FORM] is active until the end of this month - Midnight of April the 30th!
Make sure you enter before then, and remember only ONE ENTRY per person, otherwise you will be ineligible for the prizes!
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