Benson JEEZ Germanium Fuzz

Benson’s own take on germanium fuzz: two temperature-stabilized GE 2N404 transistors that run from clean boost to full fuzz on a single knob.

Most germanium fuzz pedals begin with a classic circuit and set out to improve it, but with the Jeez, Benson set the old schematics aside and built their own design around a pair of GE 2N404 germanium transistors, and what came out is less a fuzz with a few extra tricks than a germanium gain stage that covers clean boost, treble-booster grit, cranked-amp crunch, and full fuzz from one knob. Germanium transistors are famously sensitive to temperature, which is why Benson builds a warming system into their fuzzes to hold the transistors steady, and on the Jeez that system reaches its target in about 30 seconds from room temperature, compared with roughly three minutes on Benson’s earlier designs.

Around those transistors, Benson added high-headroom input and output stages that give the Jeez a flexibility you don’t usually get from germanium. The high input impedance means it doesn’t care much what sits before it on your board, and the low output impedance lets it drive up to 16 volts peak to peak down a guitar cable, so cleaner settings stay detailed and full while higher settings can hit the front of your amp as hard as you want. Rolling up the gain takes you from a quiet, full-range germanium clean boost through treble-booster overdrive and vintage dirt in the 2 to 6 range, into a tough, cranked plexi sound around 7, and finally into thick germanium fuzz at the top of the knob.

There’s also something subtler happening that rewards a little time with the pedal. The bias shifts with how hard you play, which has the practical effect of sustaining notes you wouldn’t expect to sustain, so at some settings you can play overdriven chords lightly and then dig in to push into a longer, singing sustain. It’s easy to miss the first time through, but once you hear it, it becomes something you can play with intentionally, especially with the tone control turned up.

That tone control works more like a vintage amp than a typical pedal, because it sits entirely before the gain stage. At noon it’s relatively flat, turning it up sends more treble into the transistors, and turning it down cuts treble before they see it. Like an amp, its effect is most obvious at cleaner settings and becomes more of a coloration as the gain rises, since the germanium transistors smooth out harsh EQ much the way a tube power section would.

The LED lets you watch the warming system at work. White means both heaters are on, yellow or aqua means one of them is, and green means both are off because the transistors have reached their target temperature. As long as the light keeps cycling between states, the temperature control is doing its job, and if it settles on green on a hot stage, it simply means the pedal is already above 110 degrees Fahrenheit.