MusicRadar Verdict
If you want a Fuzz Face-type pedal, this has the sound and is compact, robust and reasonably priced, with the ability to focus its fatness with the shape knob.
Pros
- +
Germanium transistors. Bias control. Great tones.
Cons
- -
Battery power only.
MusicRadar's got your back Our team of expert musicians and producers spends hours testing products to help you choose the best music-making gear for you. Find out more about how we test.
Based on a classic Arbiter Fuzz Face, with a few original tweaks, the Ge Fuzz Ace features germanium transistors - not the typical NKT275s, but a type that DRW believes have not previously been used in this design.
"The experience is typically vintage germanium Fuzz Face with amp-like overdrive up to a sweet singing fuzz"
These PNP transistors would need reversed polarity to run from a standard 9V power adaptor, so the pedal eschews a power socket for battery power only.
Besides standard fuzz and level controls, you get bias - which adjusts the input impedance, useful for matching it to various pickup types - and shape, which dials in some midrange boost.
The experience is typically vintage germanium Fuzz Face with amp-like overdrive at low levels of the fuzz knob, up to a sweet singing fuzz with an aggressive trebly edge, cleaning up smoothly with guitar volume.
“We were arguing a lot and we were miserable”: How Green Day exceeded expectations with their most ambitious song
"There’s plenty for us guitarists to learn – and ‘less is more’ is the overriding lesson": how to play like George Harrison on The Beatles' Abbey Road
“They didn’t like Prince’s bikini underwear”: Prince’s support sets for the The Rolling Stones in 1981 are remembered as disastrous, but guitarist Dez Dickerson says that the the crowd reaction wasn’t as bad as people think
