Blammo! Shrew

LOW NOISE DISTORTION

 The Shrew is our take on a classic opamp based distortion circuit but with a few modern upgrades and a bit more tonal flexibility. Here’s what we did: slimmed down the enclosure, beefed up the power filtering, upgraded the footswitch to a relay based true bypass system that doesn’t click, added an optional noise gate, and then modified the clipping section for more colors. The noise gate is designed to quite the hiss and hum heard between notes, or when not playing, that’s inherent to high gain circuits but also adds a snappier attack under the finger tips which is great for faster players. The ‘CLIP’ knob controls the hard clipping diodes that when set far left offers the symmetrical option employed by two germanium diodes (D9J and 1n34A) and an asymmetrical option when dialed all the way right side that uses an LED.

• Soft switching / true bypass

  • High quality components
  • Board mounted Alpha pots and switches

  • Yellow LED

  • Top mounted jacks

  • 2.1 mm center negative 9 volt DC standard power jack

  • Current draw: 31ma