The effects we’ve checked out so far from Malaise Forever have been glorious, starting with the magnificent Clubber Lang Harmonic Percolator Fuzz, and continuing with the Rage Monster Germanium Gain Stage. For Pedal #3 today, we’re helping with the release of the brand new Iron Fistula JFET Preamp Drive, a swiss army knife of incredible tones and dialed-in dirt for days – let’s see what’s in store, shall we?
The Iron Fistula is a flexible JFET transistor-based overdrive/preamp pedal, and Malaise Forever’s love letter to the plexi-drives of yore. The EQ section sports a powerful active bass control (Body) that is placed just prior to the Gain control in the circuit. As a result, the two controls are highly interactive with one another in two ways — the presence of the low end will increase as the gain is increased, and the point at which Body is set will have a significant effect on how hard the circuit clips. This can drive the circuit into a much fuzzier territory than JFET overdrives typically reside when both controls are maxed. The output of the circuit sees utilizes a passive variable frequency filter that subtly sets the Peak of the treble frequencies, just before a JFET buffer which minimizes output impedance.
With more than enough volume on tap, the Iron Fistula also has a low noise floor to make it an effective full-frequency clean (or dirty) boost to slam the front end of a tube amp. It makes for a perfect overdrive channel compliment to a clean solid-state amp as well, and serves as a particularly effective bass overdrive/preamp. However, the Body control is calibrated in a way that significantly boosts low-end frequencies without muddying the overall sound by filtering out high end as a byproduct. This circuit really shines as an end-of-chain stacker to help shape the EQ of the dirt being fed into it and add another dimension to your signal’s overdriven character.
Four controls is all it takes to create some powerfully overdriven sounds with the Iron Fistula – JFETs are able to emulate tube amp saturation with surprising accuracy, making them perfect for amp-in-a-box style circuits like this one. From the minute we plugged it in and cranked it up, it was clear that this is a special pedal, and after diving in further that theory was confirmed. Cheers to Zac and Malaise Forever on this newest release – more info and ordering on their website as always, and if you’d like to hear what this one can do, please check out our demo video on YouTube. Thanks!!
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