Germanium transistors have several drawbacks, although some players - including me - consider them virtues.
Roll back the volume on your guitar and the distortion level on a germanium stomp box will come down as well. There’s a warm floppiness to the way the speaker breaks up the distorted sound is round and comfortable. Without going into a lot of technical detail, germanium pedals tend to reflect the qualities of an old tube amp, like a Gibson GA-5, pushed hard on volume. Although the mass-produced guitar stomp box didn’t arrive until the 1960s, germanium had been used as a material for semiconductors in electronics since the 1940s. When you listen to Jimi Hendrix wailing through a Fuzz Face, that’s germanium hard at work mutating his tone. Complicating the debate is a new generation of stomp boxes that strive to blend the growling voices of both germanium and silicon transistors.
The truth is, germanium and silicon fuzz boxes are both terrific, but are ideal for different sonic approaches. The greatest debate in stomp boxes is also the dirtiest: whether germanium based distortion or fuzz pedals are better than pedals with silicon based transistors.
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