• Poly-octave analogue synth pedal
• Combines the most common types of dirt and nasty analogue octave effects
• 3 octave settings for individual or combined use
• 6 knobs to control the signal flow
  o   Sensitivity Control – for level and fuzz control
  o   Dry Control – to allow through high quality buffered version of the original signal
  o   Tone Contol – balances the low and high frequency content of the octaves only
  o   +1 Octave – vintage octave effect
  o   -1 Octave – 1 synth octave down
  o   -2 Octave – 2 synth octaves down
• 3PDT Footswitch with true bypass
• 9V battery operation or DC port power supply with up to 25V headroom available
• Heavy duty diecast metal casing.

Introduction
The Blue Boy Deluxe is the king of smooth, singing low/medium gain sounds.

The Controls

Gain Control: The gain control of the Blue Boy Deluxe is designed to have a wide sweep of gain sounds. With the gain control at minimum, the sound is pure clean. At about 60%, you have as much gain as a TS. With the gain maxed, you have 3 times the gain of a TS type pedal.

Despite this amount of gain, the delivery is very smooth. I like to think of the Blue Boy Deluxe as being a very 'polite' pedal. At the same time, it is very faithful to your original tone, so if you dig in, the Blue Boy Deluxe will follow very nicely. But of all my pedals, it is definitely the smoothest. It's an amazing pedal for blues and 'fusion' leads.

Another aspect of the Blue Boy Deluxe is the fact that the pedal doesn't compress as much as a typical TS type of pedal. This makes it a much better mate than a TS type of pedal for higher output single coils and humbuckers.

Character Control: This is a feature which is not available from any other manufacturer (as far as I know!). This is effectively a pre-overdrive bass control. By controlling the amount of bass in the pre-overdrive signal, you can change the character or feel of the overdriven sound. By turning character all the way down, you can get great, tight, high gain sounds, wonderful for palm-muting. Turning up the character adds more 'momentum' to the tone, and works wonderfully with single note work. Most other pedals will only have one static 'character' for the overdrive.

Tone Control: This is a 'balancing' control. Unlike other designs which progressively roll off the top end of your guitar sound, this tone control affects both the low and high frequencies. It's effectively like having a 2 band low/high EQ. As you turn down the tone control, the lows increase, whilst the highs increase. Visa versa as you turn up the tone control. This, in conjunction with the mid, brightness and internal presence controls means that you can dial in almost any tone you like.

Mid Control: The original Blue Boys had an internal voicing control. After some long consideration, I decided to change this over to a dedicated midrange control. As with the Tube Zone, a dedicated midrange control is very important as the mids dictate how  well a pedal sits in a sonic mix. I though that there was a bit too much overlap between the functionality of the original voicing control and the tone control. The mids mow control just the midrange, whilst the tone control adjusts the low/high balance. The mid control featured on the Blue Boy Deluxe is unique in that it is highly interactive with the tone control.

Brightness Control: This was initially an internal control (like the character control), but has been turned into an external control. The brightness control was initially designed to allow users to match the brightness of the pedal for their rig and taste. It was intended as a set-and-forget controls for people with a consistent rig. However, a common request from many professional players who found themselves using different 'house-rigs' every night was to make this control external so that they sound set the brightness from night to night. This is the last tone shaping control in the signal path.

Other Features: Of course, the new Blue Boy Deluxe contains all the standard features of all MI Audio pedals, namely, True Bypass switching, highest quality components, die-cast enclosure, and a power supply which can run up to 25V DC with a suitable external power supply. But the Blue Boy Deluxe also features professionally powder coated and silk screened with a clear lens yellow/amber LED. Also, the IC (a classic JRC4558D), is mounted in a socket so that you can experiment with different ICs.

The Crunch Box Distortion is my take on the high gain British. The history of the Crunch Box actually goes back a few years. I came up with the design after careful study of the way that modern British style amps get their overdrive. I found that there was a very big concentration of the frequency information in the midrange. So I started to experiment with different prototype ideas, until I settled on a design in late 2003. Since then, various prototypes were sent out for serious road testing, and the final design was released in early 2006.

The first batch of Crunch Box Distortion pedals sold out in record time. Within 3 weeks, my initial batch of 500 were sold. Since then, I've consulted with many users, and their feedback has been used to further tune this amazing pedal. The latest Crunch Box is better than ever, and will continue to be, I am sure, the most popular pedal that we make.

The GI Fuzz is a high gain fuzz design, featuring a trio of ultra low noise, high gain silicon transistors. This is not a fuzz for the faint hearted. It has about 20db more gain than a Fuzz Face, so you can think of the gain achievable as being equivalent to a a Fuzz Face at full tilt being driven by a booster! This is military spec fuzz, complete with a camouflage green aluminium enclosure and stencil script !

The GI Fuzz is not a clone of anything out there. It is new design which I've been working on for about a year now, and it's gone through many iterations.

In the end, I settled on a design which makes the GI Fuzz one of the most versatile fuzz pedals out there. At last, the fuzz pedal has joined the 21st century! No longer the 2 knob, unstable, radio receiver of yesteryear. You get 6 knobs, an internal trimmer, a 3 position switch, and the ability to create anything from fat bluesy tones, to traditional fuzz, to all-out sustain, to gated, synth-like bleeps.

Very briefly, the GI Fuzz features:

• A huge gain range, from nothing to sustain-for-days
• It can be used as a low gain device (for a fat bluesy bite), which is fairly unique for a fuzz pedal, since fuzz pedals tend to have a very narrow range of gain.
• To tame this pedal, there's an internal gain trimmer to wind things back (which I recommend)
• A load control, which is a variable input impedance. This can be used to match the GI Fuzz to humbuckers as well as single coils (Fuzz pedals tend to have low input impedance which is a better match for single coils. Now you can also use humbuckers without any problems). You can also use it to go from a tradition fuzz sound (low input impedance) to a more articulate sound with detailed highs (high impedance)
• A bias control to set up the operating point of the transistors, from a fat symmetrical fuzz, to an asymmetrical 'mosquito' buzz, and beyond, to a gated synth-like sound (almost sounds like your amp is about to die!)
• A body control, which full range mid range control. The mids, of course, are the most important frequencies for determining how your guitar tone sits in with the rest of the band.
• A tone control, which controls both lows and highs, as opposed to simply a high cut filter. This is like bass and treble controls rolled into one. The combination of the tone and the body controls is like having a low/mid/high EQ
• A volume control with output to spare. You can use the GI fuzz to overdrive your amp.
• A 3 position bright switch to help tame the top end. This is useful if you're going to use your GI Fuzz with a bright 'modern' voiced clean channel, or if you're going to use the GI with overdrive pedals (which tend to be darker, and by comparison, make a normal fuzz sound shrill)
• A heavy duty 3PDT True Bypass footswitch for no tone loss when the GI Fuzz is bypassed.
• A 9V adaptor plug (2.1mm barrel connection).
• Super quiet operation, due to its unique design.
• High quality overrated components for rock-solid reliability. In fact, you can use the GI Fuzz with anything up to 25V DC power source, although for a fuzz pedal, 9V is the best operating voltage.
• Each and every GI Fuzz is hand-made by me in Sydney, Australia.
• As with all my pedals, it carries a 5 year warranty.
• Professionally powder-coated and silk-screened die-cast aluminium enclosure, measuring only 11cm * 6cm *3m ("MXR" size).

In Depth
I get asked often about fuzz pedals, and I must confess, up until about 5 years ago, I didn't really get it. Then I started to develop an appreciation for these little guys. so eventually, I started to think about making a fuzz pedal of my own. After all, they seemed very simple, almost crude. Piece of cake, right?

Well, I was wrong there. I spent a long time studying fuzz pedals, and quickly learnt that those things are actually very complex beasts. Their circuits are simple, but this is a historical accident, I think. In reality, what they do is very complex, despite the low component count. In fact, I think that there are more 'parameters' in a fuzz sound than in an overdrive or a distortion. However, a quick survey of the pedals on the market reveals that OD and distortion pedals come with more knobs (to do a simpler job), but a fuzz pedal typically has just 2 knobs, and if you're lucky, 3.

So what are the parameters associated with producing a fuzz sound:

• Pickup loading: The way that a fuzz pedal interacts with your pickups effectively pre-filters your tone, and is a big part of the fuzz sound. Some pedals have a very low input impedance, and hence suck a lot of the top end out of your tone from the very start. Other pedals don't load your pickups very much, and this make the sound a bit more like an overdrive pedal. Generally, this characteristic is an intrinsic part of each fuzz design, and even though it's an important aspect of the fuzz sound, it's not something that you would ordinarily have control over.
• Fuzz amount.
• Clipping symmetry: Once again, a very important parameter for determining overall tone and character of your fuzz pedal. Typically, this not only varies from design to design, but also from unit to unit. If you take 2 vintage fuzz pedals made in the same batch, they may very well sound different. Clipping symmetry is the major reason for this.
• Tone shaping: ideally, it would be great to have control over the 3 major frequency bands at the output, namely, low, mid and high.
• Bandwidth: How 'high' does the top end of the fuzz go. Traditional fuzz pedals (which were designed to be used with darker vintage amps) didn't restrict the top end. This is why vintage fuzz pedals don't sound great with new amps. This 'bandwidth' control should be independent of the tone shaping.
• Output volume control.

So as opposed to building a simple circuit which 'hard-wired' these parameters, I isolated each of them and made them configurable. And that's how I ended up with the controls mentioned above. I won't bore you with more detail.

Sound Samples
Well, I get a lot of questions about the difference between the GI and the Neo, so what I thought I'd do is record 2 sets of everything, one with the GI and the other with the Neo. They're presented here next to each other so that you can A/B them to hear the difference for yourself.

Warning: My playing sux. These samples are meant to demonstrate features, not chops.

Also, note that there's quite a bit of high frequency artifacts from the mp3 encoding. They're not there in the original wav files.

The guitar parts were played with my beat-up 'SX' Strat copy, a Peavey Classic 30 (clean channel, flat EQ, volume very low,... about 1.5, and a touch of spring reverb), miced with a pair of ADK condenser mics, through a Behringer mixer into the computer.

Here's a short demo I recorded in about an hour from start to finish, so please excuse the boring riff, awful playing and poor mix! I'm not a very good guitarist, I know, I know,...

GI Fuzz Demo

The track contains a drum loop, and the following guitar parts, all played with my beat-up 'SX' Strat copy, a Peavey Classic 30 (clean channel, flat EQ, volume very low,... about 1.5, and a touch of spring reverb), miced with a pair of ADK condenser mics, through a Behringer mixer into the computer.

Rhythm Guitar 1 : this is the first guitar that you hear. Neck pickup. There are no effects, or post EQ or anything. Notice how I've used the Fuzz to fatten up the tone.
   - Fuzz - 15%,
   - Load - 75%
   - Bias - fat (set by ear)
   - body - 50%
   - Tone - 40%
   - Vol - 50%
   - Bright cut - off
   - internal gain - 50%

Rhythm Guitar 2 :A little to the right in the mix and louder than the first rhythm guitar. Bridge and middle pickup. Once again, no effects or additional EQ. I've backed off the guitar volume a bit, and even though the pedal is set exactly the same way as the first rhythm guitar part, notice how nicely it's cleaned up.
   - Fuzz - 15%,
   - Load - 75%
   - Bias - fat (set by ear)
   - body - 50%
   - Tone - 40%
   - Vol - 50%
   - Bright cut - off
   - internal gain - 50%

Bass Guitar : Really nasty! my old samick bass through the GI fuzz, DI into the mixing desk!!! I dropped the low mids a bit so that it doesn't overlap too much with the guitar parts I also added a compressor to cover up for my sloppy bass playing..
   - Fuzz - 30%,
   - Load - 100%
   - Bias - fat (set by ear)
   - body - 30%
   - Tone - 50%
   - Vol - 50%
   - Bright cut - left (middle bright cut)
   - internal gain - 50%

Lead Guitar : Neck pickup. I've rolled down the load a bit to get more of a traditional fuzz sound. I added a stereo delay plugin. Also note that the fuzz is only on 50%, and the recording was done at low volumes, so the sustain isn't as a result of feedback. Other than the slight delay, there's no effects or EQ.
   - Fuzz - 50%,
   - Load - 40%
   - Bias - fat (set by ear)
   - body - 60%
   - Tone - 50%
   - Vol - 50%
   - Bright cut - off
   - internal gain - 50%

'Mosquito' Guitars : These are the two guitars after the solo guitar. They're panned hard left and right and play the same line an octave apart. I wanted to demonstrate how powerful the bias control is. Here, I've got a slight gate happening, and the clipping is very asymmetrical, for a very mosquito, synth-like tone. Very different to the lead tone! Once again, no additional EQ.
   - Fuzz - 50%,
   - Load - 40%
   - Bias - set low to make the pedal gate (set by ear)
   - body - 40%
   - Tone - 75%
   - Vol - 50%
   - Bright cut - off
   - internal gain - 50%

Ahhh, the Neo Fuzz. This is the crème de la crème of fuzz. Vintage fuzz at its best.

The circuit concept is the same as that of the GI Fuzz, but instead of NPN high gain silicon transistors, the Neo Fuzz is built around a pair of hand selected early 70s NOS AC128 germanium transistors. There's also a third silicon transistor which is not involved in the fuzz tone generation. The tone is pure germanium. Each germanium transistor is tested for leakage current and gain, and only the best of these transistors is used in the Neo Fuzz. The other cool feature is the high intensity pink LED. Very cool!

The tone of the Neo Fuzz is remarkably different to the G.I. The Neo is much more vintage sounding, a lot smoother, with less bite and buzz. It's gain is also a lot tamer, but don't worry, there's still plenty on tap.

Once again, the Neo Fuzz is not a clone of anything out there. It is new design which I've been working on for about a year now, and it's gone through many iterations.

The other features of the  Neo Fuzz are the same as the GI Fuzz, namely:

• A huge gain range, from nothing to sustain-for-days
• It can be used as a low gain device (for a fat bluesy bite), which is fairly unique for a fuzz pedal, since fuzz pedals tend to have a very narrow range of gain.
• To tame this pedal, there's an internal gain trimmer to wind things back (which I recommend)
• A load control, which is a variable input impedance. This can be used to match the Neo Fuzz to humbuckers as well as single coils (Fuzz pedals tend to have low input impedance which is a better match for single coils. Now you can also use humbuckers without any problems). You can also use it to go from a tradition fuzz sound (low input impedance) to a more articulate sound with detailed highs (high impedance)
• A bias control to set up the operating point of the transistors, from a fat symmetrical fuzz, to an asymmetrical 'mosquito' buzz, and beyond, to a gated synth-like sound (almost sounds like your amp is about to die!)
• A body control, which full range mid range control. The mids, of course, are the most important frequencies for determining how your guitar tone sits in with the rest of the band.
• A tone control, which controls both lows and highs, as opposed to simply a high cut filter. This is like bass and treble controls rolled into one. The combination of the tone and the body controls is like having a low/mid/high EQ
• A volume control with output to spare. You can use the Neo fuzz to overdrive your amp.
• A 3 position bright switch to help tame the top end. This is useful if you're going to use your Neo Fuzz with a bright 'modern' voiced clean channel, or if you're going to use the Neo with overdrive pedals (which tend to be darker, and by comparison, make a normal fuzz sound shrill)
• A heavy duty 3PDT True Bypass footswitch for no tone loss when the Neo Fuzz is bypassed.
• A 9V adaptor plug (2.1mm barrel connection).
• Super quiet operation, due to its unique design.
• High quality overrated components for rock-solid reliability. In fact, you can use the GI Fuzz with anything up to 25V DC power source, although for a fuzz pedal, 9V is the best operating voltage.
• Each and every GI Fuzz is hand-made by me in Sydney, Australia.
• As with all my pedals, it carries a 5 year warranty.
• Professionally powder-coated and silk-screened die-cast aluminium enclosure, measuring only 11cm * 6cm *3m ("MXR" size).

In Depth
I get asked often about fuzz pedals, and I must confess, up until about 5 years ago, I didn't really get it. Then I started to develop an appreciation for these little guys. so eventually, I started to think about making a fuzz pedal of my own. After all, they seemed very simple, almost crude. Piece of cake, right?

Well, I was wrong there. I spent a long time studying fuzz pedals, and quickly learnt that those things are actually very complex beasts. Their circuits are simple, but this is a historical accident, I think. In reality, what they do is very complex, despite the low component count. In fact, I think that there are more 'parameters' in a fuzz sound than in an overdrive or a distortion. However, a quick survey of the pedals on the market reveals that OD and distortion pedals come with more knobs (to do a simpler job), but a fuzz pedal typically has just 2 knobs, and if you're lucky, 3.

So what are the parameters associated with producing a fuzz sound:

• Pickup loading: The way that a fuzz pedal interacts with your pickups effectively pre-filters your tone, and is a big part of the fuzz sound. Some pedals have a very low input impedance, and hence suck a lot of the top end out of your tone from the very start. Other pedals don't load your pickups very much, and this make the sound a bit more like an overdrive pedal. Generally, this characteristic is an intrinsic part of each fuzz design, and even though it's an important aspect of the fuzz sound, it's not something that you would ordinarily have control over.
• Fuzz amount.
• Clipping symmetry: Once again, a very important parameter for determining overall tone and character of your fuzz pedal. Typically, this not only varies from design to design, but also from unit to unit. If you take 2 vintage fuzz pedals made in the same batch, they may very well sound different. Clipping symmetry is the major reason for this.
• Tone shaping: ideally, it would be great to have control over the 3 major frequency bands at the output, namely, low, mid and high.
• Bandwidth: How 'high' does the top end of the fuzz go. Traditional fuzz pedals (which were designed to be used with darker vintage amps) didn't restrict the top end. This is why vintage fuzz pedals don't sound great with new amps. This 'bandwidth' control should be independent of the tone shaping.
• Output volume control.

So as opposed to building a simple circuit which 'hard-wired' these parameters, I isolated each of them and made them configurable. And that's how I ended up with the controls mentioned above. I won't bore you with more detail.

Sound Samples
Well, I get a lot of questions about the difference between the G.I. and the Neo, so what I thought I'd do is record 2 sets of everything, one with the G.I. and the other with the Neo. They're presented here next to each other so that you can A/B them to hear the difference for yourself.

Warning: My playing sux. These samples are meant to demonstrate features, not chops.

Also, note that there's quite a bit of high frequency artifacts from the mp3 encoding. They're not there in the original wav files.

The guitar parts were played with my beat-up 'SX' Strat copy, a Peavey Classic 30 (clean channel, flat EQ, volume very low,... about 1.5, and a touch of spring reverb), miced with a pair of ADK condenser mics, through a Behringer mixer into the computer.