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FrançaisKNIFE OD & FUZZ
GERMANIUM LIMITED
TWO CHANNELS · VINTAGE OVERDRIVE · FUZZ · PREAMP
FULLY ANALOG. ORIGINAL DESIGN. BUILT AND PAINTED BY HAND IN FRANCE.
€265
KNIFE OD & FUZZ
GERMANIUM LIMITED
TWO CHANNELS · VINTAGE OVERDRIVE · FUZZ · PREAMP
FULLY ANALOG. ORIGINAL DESIGN. BUILT AND PAINTED BY HAND IN FRANCE.
€265
THE FUZZ FACE AND TONE BENDER RANGE. REBUILT AND DOUBLED.
The Knife OD is a vintage overdrive and fuzz built around BJT transistor clipping, with no clipping diodes. Inspired by the Fuzz Face and the early Tone Benders, it keeps their transistor voice without their limits. Those circuits only came alive in a narrow band of the gain control. We rebuilt the gain structure so the whole sweep is usable, then split it into two footswitchable channels.
GREEN CHANNEL · LOW GAIN: The overdrive side. The full travel of the knob runs from clean preamp through warm overdrive into light fuzz.
RED CHANNEL · HIGH GAIN: The fuzz side. The same travel spent entirely inside the fuzz, from tight and punchy to thick and sustaining.
Both switched by foot, mid-phrase.
The Germanium ‘Cooper Antic’ variation is built on a combined silicon and germanium approach, with a reworking and tweaking of the original silicon Knife OD&Fuzz circuit for an authentic soft, creamy tone, as well as greater versatility in tone shaping and the Shape Bias control.
Four decades of transistor fuzz: from Rumble to Foxy Lady, from Ace of Spades to Bloom.
NEW EXPERIMENTS. NEW TONE.
Some experiments with transistors, biasing, and the components of the original Knife OD&Fuzz circuit led us to new and great-sounding solutions.
“Replacing with a germanium transistor adds warmth and roundness. Changing the feedback loop compensates for the low gain of the vintage transistor and reshapes the input bias. Completely reworking the biasing achieves more compression with lower gain. Switching to germanium enables reduction of the high-frequency smoothing filters. A refined frequency response: tight and compressed lows, bright but rounded highs, and an accentuated lower midrange.”
The Cooper Antic is our second ideal tuning and adaptation of germanium and silicon fuzzes, vintage preamps, and overdrives. It has a larger grain, rounder and softer clipping with slightly more compressed gain, a creamy frequency response, and an alternative tone-shaping approach.
FUZZ’S ATTACK & GAIN
Attack is not a fuzz knob in the usual sense. On the classic circuits, the gain control sits inside the clipping stage, which is why so much of its travel does nothing you can use. Attack works one step earlier: it adjusts the response of the first transistor directly, setting how hard the signal arrives at the clipping stage.
So the control moves evenly from end to end. Every position is a setting you can work with, and the pedal holds its definition where vintage circuits lose theirs. Chords stay readable at the top of the range, single notes keep their edge.
The Cooper Antic version delivers smoother clipping with more compression, articulated large grain, a little accentuated midrange with overall brighter sound, and a germanium preamp‑like tone at low and medium gain.
TONAL SHAPE CONTROL
Shape works on the signal before it reaches the clipping stage. It decides what the transistors have to work with, rather than filtering the result afterwards the way a passive tone control does. It moves the bias at the same time, which changes how much gain and compression come with it.
Turn it left and the tone sharpens: upper mids forward, lows pulled back, the response a little more open. Turn it right and it rounds out: lows and low mids fill in, the bias pushes harder, and the whole thing sits deeper into overdrive.
In the Cooper Antic version, the Shape control feels more pronounced due to the circuit reconfiguration and can control the bias of the germanium transistor for stable operation.
TEARING SPEAKERS, REIMAGINED
The Knife OD & Fuzz offers immense headroom offers immense headroom, pushing your amp even at low gain with a clean boost. At medium gain, it provides rich saturation and a warm vintage overdrive. Higher-medium gain produces a musical, asymmetrical fuzzy overdrive, while maximum gain unleashes a thick, powerful fuzz with long sustain and compression.
Regardless of the gain setting, the Knife OD responds beautifully to your guitar’s volume knob, delivering crystal-clear tones when rolled back, like a classic Fuzz Face.
The Cooper Antic version can work as a vintage germanium preamp with varied tonal color, or as a source of soft, compressed, creamy saturation and old‑school rounded clipping with a brighter tone.