Death By Audio's Germanium Filter pedal is its "love letter to sticking a pencil in your speaker"

We know Death By Audio always bring the heavy and the wild, so its fuzzy "love letter to sticking a pencil in your speaker" with the Germanium Filter is exactly what we'd want to hear from the US company.

It's built on a console-style drive circuit, "a dash of obsolete germanium transistors" a super intense DBA-style filter. It's claiming to deliver a sound "heavy enough to crush on and sharp enough to slice a tomato".

Death By Audio

(Image credit: Death By Audio)

A huge gain range is promised that should deliver plenty of usability beyond extremes with mild overdrive if you don't want to unleash a full fuzz pedal blast. 

Indeed, DBA stress that in true Germanium fuzz fashion you need to be using your guitar's volume control to get the best out of the dynamics this true bypass pedal can offer. 

The Filter control on the pedal is said to be 'extremely unconventional'; "it’ll take you from bottomless, sub-woofered out lows to super searing and brittle highs, with a universe of tone in between," says DBA. 

"The Gain knob starts with a dirty boost that then spans through saturated drive, spitting distortion, and a blistering fuzz tone," the company continues. "Get ready for your sound to be cranked up to infinity-and-a-half and captured on tape by the most incredible recording engineer you’ve ever heard - only there’s no engineer and no studio. Just you, your guitar, your amp and the Germanium Filter."

The Germanium Filter is $225. More info at Death By Audio

Rob Laing
Guitars Editor, MusicRadar

I'm the Guitars Editor for MusicRadar, handling news, reviews, features, tuition, advice for the strings side of the site and everything in between. Before MusicRadar I worked on guitar magazines for 15 years, including Editor of Total Guitar in the UK. When I'm not rejigging pedalboards I'm usually thinking about rejigging pedalboards.