germanium distortion pedal Cortisol Legend - 4hp

germanium distortion pedal Cortisol Legend - 4hpIntroducing the Cortisol Legend: a spiritual successor to one of my early designs, the Steroid Legend, it presents as 4hp of white hot saturation and hairy distortion, and features manual control over two op amp driven gain stages, with a diode saturation control in the middle, giving you precise control over distortion ranging from smoldering saturation all the way into utter rail to rail fuzzification. As for the diodes, the Cortisol Legend has two

Introducing the Cortisol Legend: a spiritual successor to one of my early designs, the Steroid Legend, it presents as 4hp of white hot saturation and hairy distortion, and features manual control over two op-amp driven gain stages, with a diode saturation control in the middle, giving you precise control over distortion ranging from smoldering saturation all the way into utter rail-to-rail fuzzification.

As for the diodes, the Cortisol Legend has two flavors on tap: Steroid Legend-inspired diodes and genuine, Cold War-era USSR-made Germanium diodes from the far reaches of Europe. These diodes are getting increasingly hard to find, but have been known for their warm and fuzzy characteristics by guitar pedal enthusiasts for years. Here, you get the genuine article, for as long as I can reliably source them - one day, there'll simply be no more.

In addition to having control over the saturation depth, the Cortisol Legend offers an additional control parameter: Eustress and Distress. Roll off the edge and noise a bit with a Styroflex-capacitor filter which varies with saturation depth, or leave no edge unjagged with this setting.

Speaking of noise, this thing is LOUD, so you may want to have an attenuator such as the psATT on hand, unless of course the loudness is exactly what you want. Hand in hand with the overdrive and distortion comes, of course, beautiful new harmonics added to anything from single waveforms to samples, sounds and entire mixes. 

Various diodes will be available at different times, but all variants are ultimately limited - all Germanium diodes used in these are new old stock from the Cold War, and one day they will run out, and I will no longer be able to procure them. Expect individual modules to have a bit of their own character, as I am confident these diodes were not made to the exacting specifications we have today.