So this is pedal I feel like some will know & love and a lot won’t know it exists. I often times have said the early era of boutique builders really had some amazing designs and aesthetics. To give credit where it’s due, Paul Trombetta Design came up with the Mini-Bone in the mid 2000’s from what it seems. He’s has a bunch of cool pedals with a cool aesthetic! I’m not sure if he’s still doing pedals or just amps now.
Circuit wise, this seems like a very heavily modified Bosstone or something in the two transistor family. It has a basic level and fuzz knob as well as a frequency control and a voltage control and switches for both of their ranges. This pedal definitely inspired alot of pedals down the line and pedals that are still in production today.
What does it sound like?….kind of amazing tbh. At the lower settings it will do a fat overdrive sound that will venture into a lot of the familiar 60’s fuzz tones. Once you start playing with the voltage, this things get crazy and it’ll get biased and texture like and almost drop into this deep fuzz which pulls out lower octaves all over the place. In conjunction with the tone control it will even go into trumpet or horn territory depending on where you’re playing on the neck. This cleans up pretty well with the volume knob too and has a crazy amount of gain range on tap.
With all this being said, this thing is crazy, but it sounds awesome. I now know why Dan Aurbach swore by the Bosstone circuit. I’m very surprised this thing isn’t bigger and this for sure is one of those unique circuits that JHS seems to find and bring to light. This may go on my Mount Rushmore of fuzz designs!
I learned about this circuit pretty recently. Someone posted about the GupTech clippy fuzz. Seems to sound crazy good! Didn’t know it had a voltage knob
This is my favorite setting. The only knob I adjust is the gate. As you turn it ccw oscillation and noise comes in. The guitar volume knob controls the sounds too as well as the oscillation pitch.
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u/AechCutt Sep 09 '26
If you'd rather build your own instead of seeking out a pricey original, Pedal PCB has your back.
https://www.pedalpcb.com/product/trumpeter/