I have a reissue Herzog and it’s also great as an amp. Those are very special units that sound good all the way up and down the gain dial, and I never even use that much gain really. I use it all the time, and for some reason it sounds really good on this danelectro style baritone into a little pine cabinet with a Celestion Blue. I did that once and mic’d it with a dynamic and condenser and was like, okay here’s how I get the baritone sound now. I don’t think I’ve plugged that guitar into any other amp since.

No opinion about the pedal but at least the cost is reasonable - if they were going to do a $500 UAD thing I was going to get pissed. But stuff like the Herzog or the Echoplex preamps - I don’t know how involved the builds are but the tube units make for a very special sound. It would be worth it to sell a bunch of pedals and get Dr Balls to make one.

That’s true the price was refreshing and like, most people don’t know about these things, it’s fun they went at it.

The Strymon copy mentions JFETs so I'd assume at least part of the circuit is using the fairly common "triode-to-JFET" conversion where you sub JFETs in place of preamp tubes to recreate amplifier preamps in pedal form. It works well and sounds great so why not. They probably have some other trickery going in there, hard to say.

llllllllllllllllllll wrote: Sat Jan 03, 2026 5:44 pm I have a reissue Herzog and it’s also great as an amp. Those are very special units that sound good all the way up and down the gain dial, and I never even use that much gain really. I use it all the time, and for some reason it sounds really good on this danelectro style baritone into a little pine cabinet with a Celestion Blue. I did that once and mic’d it with a dynamic and condenser and was like, okay here’s how I get the baritone sound now. I don’t think I’ve plugged that guitar into any other amp since.

No opinion about the pedal but at least the cost is reasonable - if they were going to do a $500 UAD thing I was going to get pissed. But stuff like the Herzog or the Echoplex preamps - I don’t know how involved the builds are but the tube units make for a very special sound. It would be worth it to sell a bunch of pedals and get Dr Balls to make one.

The Herzog is essentially a Champ with a dummy load on the back end and a line-out off of it. Its not too dissimilar to the line out I put on FM four_oclocker_2.2's 5E3 Deluxe build, only there the load was a speaker. One could make a Champ , either combo or head, with a "Herzog out" feature that subs in a dummy load an gives you a line out. It wouldn't have to be a Champ, per se, it could be any amp but if its higher power the load resistors start getting big.

TylerDeadPine wrote: Sat Jan 03, 2026 12:46 pm I'm a 'garnet nut' and I've liked the cut of the gib of the Strymon people, but for some reason I just can't get excited about that pedal. I think I'm pedal social media saturated so even something that so specifically targets my pleasure center can't get through the barrier of online lobotomization that has taken place.

That and a herzog is close enough to a fuzz, that most of the fun of it comes out of being in it's own box with tubes and some iron

All this has me thinking what is the special sauce in a Herzog? Its like so:

preamp gain stage -> preamp gain stage -> output power tube -> output transformer -> dummy load

I'd presume that Gar liked the sound of a cranked Champ (or similar) and wanted to port that into a bigger amp so he made that and added a dummy load so it wouldn't melt down while you took a line out from it. But is that high power output section even necessary? If you replaced the power tube with something else like another triode or a small signal pentode could you achieve similar sounds? If you did, then you wouldnt need the output transformer and dummy load and you could get an actual tube unit into something somewhat small-ish that you could put on the floor and give a stomp switch. OR you could try the same concept with subminiature tubes and a switched power supply and get it down to the size of a Big Muff.

Story goes it was Randy Bachman that would bring broke Garnet amps back into his shop in Winnipeg, and when asked what he was doing to break them he was running the speaker out from one amp into the front end of the other. So the most practical form of that being a champ with a dummy load.

Not sure where this one should go but jfc this thing kicks all sorts of ass.

https://imgur.com/a/BqL0oKS

Next time I see Sunn O))) there better be two of these on stage.

More millionaire consoles from H2 Helios and Chandler, which already make some of the most expensive per-channel stuff within a certain class. Completely out of reach but I guess I’m glad somebody is still making them, though I wonder who is even buying. I do really love working on a mixer though.

defendyachtrock wrote: Tue Jan 27, 2026 12:15 am Not sure where this one should go but jfc this thing kicks all sorts of ass.

https://imgur.com/a/BqL0oKS

Next time I see Sunn O))) there better be two of these on stage.

There was some kind of guitar magazine ad style triangular speaker cabinet back years back.

llllllllllllllllllll wrote: Tue Jan 27, 2026 12:24 pm More millionaire consoles from H2 Helios and Chandler, which already make some of the most expensive per-channel stuff within a certain class. Completely out of reach but I guess I’m glad somebody is still making them, though I wonder who is even buying. I do really love working on a mixer though.

defendyachtrock wrote: Tue Jan 27, 2026 12:15 am Not sure where this one should go but jfc this thing kicks all sorts of ass.

https://imgur.com/a/BqL0oKS

Next time I see Sunn O))) there better be two of these on stage.

There was some kind of guitar magazine ad style triangular speaker cabinet back years back.

It was these:

Which is even worse. If you want to have your head on top of a cab you need THREE cabs

Dr Tony Balls wrote: Tue Jan 27, 2026 1:18 pmWhich is even worse. If you want to have your head on top of a cab you need THREE cabs

Worse than that, if one of the side cabs starts to slide away at all, the middle cab will tip and dump your (surely quite costly) head, unless there's a locking mechanism that's not visible there.

ChudFusk wrote: Tue Jan 27, 2026 1:46 pm

Dr Tony Balls wrote: Tue Jan 27, 2026 1:18 pmWhich is even worse. If you want to have your head on top of a cab you need THREE cabs

Worse than that, if one of the side cabs starts to slide away at all, the middle cab will tip and dump your (surely quite costly) head, unless there's a locking mechanism that's not visible there.

It's the dumbest shit I've ever seen. Instagram Cabs.

If you're gonna make it difficult, just build 5 sided cabs with pentagram liness woven into the grill cloth and go all the way.