Benson Jeez - Germanium Fuzz

Benson Jeez - Germanium Fuzz

The Jeez asks the question…what if we weren’t beholden to improving historical germanium fuzz circuits and
did our own novel take instead? Just saying...they were putting things like diced carrots in Jello when these
were invented. Worth a shot?

WARM GERMANIUM
We started with some obvious ingredients - two GE transistors. Two GEs. Jeez. We added our proprietary
transistor warming system that keeps their temperature (and therefore their sound) stable - and improved it.
Our previous iterations took about 3 minutes to heat up from room temperature and the Jeez takes about 30
seconds!

THE WRAPPER
The Jeez incorporates high headroom input and output amplifiers that offer unprecedented flexibility in a
Germanium circuit. Like our previous fuzzes, we’ve kept the high input Z (doesn’t care what’s before it in the
chain), but now we’ve added low output Z as well. This means Jeez can drive 16 volts of peak to peak signal
through a guitar cable with amazing fidelity for cleaner settings, or absolutely punish an amp at higher
settings if you want it to! It’s just not fussy in any way.

THE RANGE
This flexibility also allows a huge range of usable gains and tones from the 2N404 transistors that are running
at the normal 9Vish volts. With a turn of the gain knob, Jeez can go from a pure and low noise full frequency
germanium clean boost, hit some treble booster overdrive and vintage dirt between 2-6, briefly entertain some
truly tough sounding cranked plexi tones at around 7, and bliss out in germanium fuzz heaven at the very top.
This massive range of uses might make it hard to choose how to use it…which is a nice problem to have.
The interesting thing about the Jeez is there is some envelope dependent bias excursion (cool word salad dude)
that practically has the effect of sustaining notes that don’t seem like they would normally sustain...there are
settings where you can play overdriven chords lightly, and then just picking a little harder break into more of a
sustained sequence....one of those things that’s easy to miss on first go round but once you can hear it, using it
intentionally is pretty gratifying. This is especially true at higher tone settings.

TONE CONTROL!
The tone control is unique for a pedal in that it has more in common with a vintage style amplifier...it is entirely
pre-gain. At noon it is relatively flat. Turning it up boosts treble going into the transistors (a good thing), and
below noon cuts treble going to the transistors. LIke an amp, it is most obvious at clean settings and becomes
more of a coloration at higher gain settings. You can think of the GE transistors as the power amp in a tube
amp...they take any excessive and harsh eq and smooth it out!

THE LIGHTS
Two internal heating systems are tied to an LED indicator which has 4 states...green, aqua, yellow and
white...which are mixtures of red blue and green. White = both heaters on. After powering up the light
eventually shifts to yellow or aqua to signify that just one or the other heaters are on, or green if both are off
since the transistors have reached their target temperatures. Jeez should continually toggle between states and
this is how you know the temperature control is working (or your pedal is over 110 degrees Fahrenheit due to
being on a hot stage). Don’t go overthinking it...if the lights are toggling just enjoy the show!