NOT A DIY KIT. THIS IS A FULLY BUILT PEDAL. 

All the way back in 1975, Craig Anderton, founder of Seamoon Effects, released what came to be known as the go-to reference book for aspiring pedal builders. That book is called Electronic Projects for Musicians and it unknowingly jumpstarted the designs of many budding companies. Several of the circuits in this book use integrated circuits, or “chips” as most people call them, that weren’t commonly found in commercial products of that time. One such timeless circuit born from this book was the Tube Sound Fuzz, a gain device centered around an exotic part called a hex inverter. 

The architecture of this hex inverter allows for some crisp and striking distortion using just a few parts, with some wild variation lurking within just by adjusting a few values. And companies did just that; with one of the earliest adopters of Anderton’s circuit being Electro-Harmonix. In the late ‘70s, EHX released the Hot Tubes, a modified version of this circuit, tweaked in such a way to deliver a smooth yet biting overdrive. Being a relatively unique circuit and previously unavailable commercially, the Hot Tubes had several notable users such as Stevie Ray Vaughan, Kim Gordon, Jeff Buckley and the Edge.

Another person that ran with the TSF is Jeorge Tripps of Way Huge, who tweaked the values of that circuit in a different direction and produced the brand’s flagship circuit, the Red Llama. That pedal has been in production on and off for 30 years, and found its way into the hands of several influential players, such as Tom Petty, Paul Gilbert and John Mayer. 

Our Knight School Overdrive has the DNA of Mr. Anderton’s Tube Sound Fuzz, the Hot Tubes and the Red Llama, reworked into a dirt device that covers all the gain bases, from sparkling clean boost to heavy grit with extreme touch sensitivity. We’ve included a knob for a mids scoop, which was actually featured first in old Gibson amplifiers, but we’ve implemented the version from the Matchless Chieftain amplifier, one of our shop amps and a favorite of ours. You’ll find it adds quite a lot to the character of the unit, and is especially helpful if you play British-style amps.