Temperature rising

Benson Germanium Fuzz Sinesquares Review

A few months ago we reviewed the Benson Chimera plugin by Mixwave and got hooked on the tones we could get using Benson pedals. So, today we are going to review the Benson Germanium Fuzz pedal that was kindly sent by our friends at Benson Amps and see what’s the fuzz about those pedals (see what I did there?).

As someone who mainly plays synthesizers and occasionally uses guitars in my productions, I sometimes find it hard to distinguish the difference between distortion, overdrive, and fuzz. And to be honest, they’re not that different. An over-simplified answer would be that overdrive is the effect of the volume’s breakup that would happen if, for instance, you max out your amp, distortion saturates the sounds with a lot of harmonic saturation and overtones, and fuzz is doing something similar to distortion but it focuses on making the harmonic overtones more dominant and providing a brighter sound. In synth terms, fuzz pushes your signal to a square waveform with complex overtones.

So since it’s an easy-to-produce effect, what’s the advantage of the Germanium Fuzz by Benson?

The Germanium Fuzz is a very versatile pedal that can be used for a lot of different effects and tones. It can become a clean boost pedal, an overdrive, or a screaming fuzz just by turning a few knobs. Most fuzz pedals can get pretty wild just by turning them on but with the Germanium Fuzz, you can dial in milder and cleaner tones easily.

It is also the first & only pedal with automatic thermal bias technology. What this means is that the pedal auto-adjusts and warms the transistors to provide a consistent sound despite the changes in the overall temperature. So either you’re opening at a gig with harsh summer daylight or you’re playing in a frozen cave, the pedal will compensate for the temperature changes and will work just like it’s supposed to. You can see that live by seeing the led turning orange while it’s adjusting its temperature. It even has a small difference in the maximum heat it can handle between the white and black enclosure with the black model being a bit more heat sensitive! If you’re just playing in your home studio with a relatively normal temperature that might not mean anything to you, but if you’re a touring musician you’ll have one less thing to worry about.

The Impedance knob is also something very useful. The Volume & Gain knobs work as you would expect them to do but the Impedance control is something I haven’t come across before and it’s definitely interesting. It controls the incoming signal’s volume so that you can increase or decrease the effect it’s producing. Just as you would do with your instrument’s volume control but in a more sophisticated way. It’s also great if you’re switching instruments since you’ll just change the impedance and you’re good to go.

Conclusion

Overall the Germanium Fuzz is a low-gain pedal that needs to be a little pushed to create harsh fuzz sounds but that’s what I personally prefer. I also use it with drum machines, samplers, and synthesizers so it can work perfectly as a boost or mild overdrive and that’s very useful. Its clean tones are amazing so you’ll end up using it for that reason a lot more than you’d expect on a fuzz and it’s also very neutral when it comes to EQing so it won’t be too bright or too dark meaning that it can work for pretty much everything. It’s a beautiful & industrial-looking pedal that can cover a lot of things on your pedalboard and its versatility will pleasantly surprise you!