The Tacit Blue is part of our “Vintage Reimagined” series and is a germanium Fuzz pedal that plays nicely with your pedalboard. The Tacit Blue Fuzz sound is based on a highly modified fuzz face type circuit for a more versatile vintage style sound. This fuzz can give a subtle hair to notes or get crazily thick depending on your preference. However, this pedal can be used as a nice and thick lower gain overdrive which adds huge character to your driven sound.
TRANSFORMER: Internally there is a small transformer to simulate the optimum pickup being present at the front end of the circuit. This has several benefits, most important of which it allows you to place your fuzz wherever you like in the chain of pedals. I still recommend you place it as early in the chain as possible, but if you want to be an anarchist and place it at the end... you can.
SMOOTH: This control allows you to dial back the woolliness of the fuzz by adjusting the input impedance of your signal. I find the ideal setting is between 11 and 2 O’clock depending on whether you are using humbuckers or singlecoils. Experimentation is key here. Full clockwise is as per a standard fuzz face.
FUZZ: This control adjusts the amount of fuzz. Unlike a standard fuzz face, the fuzz isn’t bunched up in the last 5% of the dial. This gives you a much wider range that you traditionally can’t with this style of circuit.
VOLUME: This controls the output level of the fuzz side of the pedal.
BIAS: This increase the “heat” of the circuit. Crank it and it gets more aggressive, roll it down and its
more mellow.
INTERNAL TRIMPOT: IN 99.9% of cases this is there for manufacture use only, FYI I like to set my fuzz faces slightly asymmetrically so that one half of the cycle has more headroom than the other, this adds character and interest to the fuzz.
POWER: The Tacit Blue is designed to work at voltages of 9V DC. Unlike some germanium Fuzzes, the Tacit Blue uses a regular polarity input from a quality centre negative power supply such as the Gigrig Generator or Voodoo Lab Pedalpower Plus. DO NOT attempt to use this pedal with other voltages or polarities.
COMPONENTS: To ensure consistency, reliability, low noise and tonal supremacy the Tacit Blue is made with extremely high-quality components. 1% metalfilm resistors, WIMA and Panasonic capacitors, and a NOS Germanium Transistors all mounted to a robust through hole gold plated PCBs. In short, all of this means you won’t have to worry about your pedal and it should give you many years of inspiring tonal bliss.