Northstage 1966

Built around a single idea: bringing two of the most famous Fuzz pedals together. The 1966 gives you the classic sound of a two-transistor Fuzz with a switchable third gain stage inside a single circuit — with an integrated treble boost on tap. Modern internals, vintage voice, hand-built in the workshop.

The sound

The fuzz is full and saturated, but the notes keep their clarity. It sits right on the edge of splutter without ever falling in, with the ultra-compressed sag the best old fuzzes are famous for. The pedal is deeply impedance-sensitive, so your guitar’s volume knob does real work: cleaning up beautifully as you roll back, thicker and dirtier as you push in. Engage the TB switch and it climbs another step. Bring in the treble boost when the song asks for it.

The idea

Three classic effects, one circuit. The FF and TB share enough common ground to live inside a single switchable design, rather than three separate pedals crammed into one enclosure. The treble boost completes the picture — a period-correct top-end lift that pulls the darkness out of the fuzz on demand. Everything is routed and grounded as one coherent circuit, not three bolted together.

The engineering

This isn’t a vintage circuit transplanted into a new box. Silicon transistors were auditioned to capture germanium’s smoothness without inheriting silicon’s harshness. The power supply was deliberately engineered with raised source impedance to drop Q2’s headroom, bringing compression in earlier — that’s where the sag comes from, not bias alone. Layout, grounding and component choice were worked through until the pedal was genuinely quiet at idle.

Build and availability

Each 1966 is hand-built in my workshop. The first batch is five units, with more to follow. The full development story — breadboarding, transistor auditions, what worked and what didn’t — lives on the journal.