The Sleeping Sun is an original 3-transistor germanium fuzz with switchable octave. I’ve cooked up a pedalboard friendly, small-box batch of Sleeping Suns using NPN transistors which will run off of standard Boss-style power supplies.

In designing the Sleeping Sun, I originally set out to make a slightly gated, sputtery, “psychedelic” themed fuzz which focused on the raspy tones heard on mid 1960s garage & psych recordings. I also had an interest in incorporating a small output transformer in order to capture some of the saturation and unique characteristics of an OT which I’d encountered in previous prototyping experiments. I think I’ve managed to go beyond my initial goals, and I even decided to incorporate a switchable octave effect while I was at it!

The SS has plenty of thick sustain on tap, but roll back the Fuzz pot and you can achieve the more traditional ragged & slightly gated Fuzz heard in early psych & garage rock tones.

The Balance pot is an incredibly wide-ranging tone control which drastically alters the character of the pedal, with sounds ranging from a fat & wooly infinite sustain with a dark top end all the waythrough a mid-range focused, nasal buzzbomb with tons of sting. Useful tones are found throughout, with high settings really accentuating the ring & cut of the Octave function.

This batch of SS uses carbon composition resistors, Philips “tropical fish”, ERO, and Nichicon audio capacitors, and AC176 and AC187 germanium transistors. Cases are powder coated in hammer-tone Bubblegum pink with raw unfinished base plates, acid etched zinc top plates, and black “witch hat” knobs. Pink LEDs…. Because pink.