Allora High-Gain Darlington Fuzz

 

Allora High-Gain Darlington Fuzz

The Allora has its beginnings in requests from players to make a higher-gain version of the Brute.  To explore this path I started experimenting with Darlington transistors.  These transistors have incredibly high Hfe measurements in the 10’s of thousands, as opposed to the low-to mid hundreds of normal transistors.  I’m using two Darlington’s in the Allora, and this amount of gain required substantial reworking of the input, output, and Detail controls;  as well as reconfiguring the overall transistor arrangement (BC108C, BC549, MPSA12’s, 2N5089).  I also opened up the Bias control to increase gating so that you can control noise, or not!

However, all of this experimentation and adjusting did not yield a “higher-gain version of the Brute,” it turned into - something else.  The Allora is more compressed, wilder, ruder, feeds-back, sputters, sags, spits, woofs, growls, and even horns(?), like no other fuzz I make.