OC201

Preamp

Limited to just 50 pedals worldwide, the OC201 Preamp puts a new spin on the familiar two-transistor fuzz design, coaxing everything from lean boost tones and rootsy drives to raw, organic fuzz from this rudimentary circuit.

It’s all thanks to a pair of unusual NOS (new-old-stock) transistors. The OC201 was the first silicon transistor developed by Mullard, manufactured using the same method as their germanium devices. Though the OC201 was quickly superseded by higher performance designs and newer construction methods, its limitations – relatively low gain and limited bandwidth – make it ideal for our purposes.

The result is a raw, articulate and richly textured fuzz that sits somewhere between the germanium and silicon archetypes. It’s extremely dynamic and expressive, with fantastic volume-knob clean-up.

In building this limited run of pedals, we’ve combined NOS (new-old-stock) OC201 transistors with high-quality modern components including WIMA capacitors and Dale metal-film resistors. We believe that this hybrid approach – using vintage components where it really counts, alongside low-noise modern parts –delivers the best combination of tone and reliability.

The transistors we have managed to collect for this limited run range across several different case styles and case markings. Some transistors are marked ‘OC201’ while others are marked ‘CV5884’ (the military spec. variant) or CV7004 (GPO spec.).

Transistors are individually tested and selected according to gain and other characteristics, and each OC201 Preamp comes with a hand-written card listing the parts used in that particular pedal. Each pedal also has a hand-stamped serial number faceplate.

About the Obsolete Devices series

They say that one person’s trash is another’s treasure and that’s certainly true when it comes to guitar pedals.

Components that have long been considered obsolete by the standards of modern electronics are highly sought-after by pedal designers. Indeed, there was a time when many believed that digital processing would make analogue effects themselves obsolete, yet they remain the benchmark for tone.

With the Obsolete Devices series, we celebrate these “obsolete” components and circuit designs by developing some brand-new obsolete devices of our own. Inspired by classic circuits of the past – extensively tweaked and modified to our own ends – and featuring a mixture of NOS (new-old-stock) and modern components, these limited-edition pedals show that there is still plenty of life left in analogue signal processing.