This circuit was my first true invention and it has now gone through dozens of iterations to end up like this. I wanted a fuzz that behaved like an overdrive. I didn't like overdrives. Found them too boring. I couldn't find a fuzz that sounded cool, but could be managed like a regular drive unit.
EMBLA takes care of all of this and more. The gain and volume knobs take you from crisp, beautiful clean boost to thick, heavy fuzz and any nuance in between. It cleans up brilliantly and just always works. With any instrument, any amp and in any setting.
The bias knob lets you starve the signal without ever turning the pedal off. This can come in handy for bassists who don't want to just add to the noise floor of the band while idle or it can help you make your guitar sound like a 60s tonebender type fuzztone. The thickness control gives you the ability to pair it up with any amp. Turn it down for low wattage setups and back up for huge stage amps.
Go get one and free yourself from the tedious hassle of soundchecking all your drive units. This one takes care of you!
Useful specs:
Power with 9VDC, centre tip negative. Same as Boss Pedals. Easy.
Current draw is quite high as I'm using logic based relay switching.
Prior to mid May all EMBLAs shipped had a current consumption of a little less than 150mA when engaged. In mid May I moved from Fujitsu Takamisawa relays to Omron relays. These do the exact same job, but draw much less current:
Idle: ~10mA
Engaged: ~70mA
