From the company that brought you the Experience octave-fuzz comes the Supernatural Germanium ($300 direct), a germanium transistor-powered fuzz that, according to Prescription’s Jack Brossart, was inspired by Peter Green’s tone on the song “Supernatural.” The true-bypass pedal sports an LED status indicator, a rugged mechanical footswitch, and a study metal enclosure. The Supernatural Germanium’s complement of Volume, Tone, Presence, Boost, and Fuzz controls provides lots of ways to adjust the sound, making it easy to get smooth, full-bodied grind.

The Supernatural Germanium’s Tone control adds low-end girth when turned left of center or high-frequency bite when dialed the opposite direction. With the Fuzz set low and the Boost turned up, we set the Tone at around 11 o’ clock and used the Presence control to bring the high mids into focus to get sweet, grinding tones from a Victoria 1x12 combo; like it was being hit with a vintage treble booster.

With a Les Paul plugged into the Supernatural Germanium, feeding the clean channel on a Fryette Memphis 30 combo, the pedal yielded a fuzzier sustain with the Volume maxed, the Fuzz control set fairly high, and the Boost knob about halfway up. Playing through the Memphis’ overdrive channel with the gain set fairly low revealed a different side of the Supernatural Germanium, as the Fuzz could be turned down with the Boost level set near maximum to get a heavy rock/metal distortion tone that was still very dynamically responsive.

KUDOS Sounds cool for everything from vintage Brit blues to classic rock and metal.

CONCERNS No adapter jack.

CONTACT Prescripton Electronics, (503) 239- 9106; fuzzbox.com