Catalinbread Giygas Fuzz

Catalinbread Giygas

The Catalinbread Giygas has a plethora of useful options. It gives you everything you’ve ever wanted in a fuzz box. Also, along with some stuff you want but didn’t know (but deep down, you totally knew).

The core of the fuzz circuit is brawny and fierce, yet with plenty of violin-like sustain. It is very articulate, and wrapping around it is a clean blend circuit.

From there, catapult the fuzz into a gyrator-based mids boost, and then into a tilt EQ circuit.

Roll the blend all the way back to use the powerful high-headroom EQ. Sculpt your clean tone, and a horde of options await.  Under the hood there are many sounds that will make our four-stringed friends extremely happy.

The three transistor fuzz circuit is harmonically rich, so it gives serious amp pummelling potential and tons of creamy sustain when cranked.

This is then feeding a JFET-equipped clean blend circuit giving 100% dry or wet with no harmonic distortion.

The signal feeds 2 cascading EQ stages so bass players can flip an internal switch that re-centers both Mids and EQ to 250Hz.

So, the Giygas can replace a whole board’s worth of dirt boxes!

Controls:

• MIDS: This is a detented control. The centre position is flat, no frequencies are affected. The Mids control is an active +/- 10dB boost or cut @ 900Hz
• EQ: This is a detented control. The centre position is flat, no frequencies are affected. The EQ control is a tilt style with the center frequency at 900Hz.
• When rolled up,  boosting everything above 900Hz and cutting everything below. When rolled down, the knob boosts everything below 900Hz and cuts everything above. The maximum boost and cut is 10dB on either side
• LOUD: Loud gives a slightly boosted signal, but when the Blend and Loud knobs are all the way up, everyone within a one-mile radius will call the cops.
• BLEND: This knob blends between clean and fuzz sounds, from 100 percent dry to 100 percent wet. This lets you preserve some natural guitar tone or pre-dialed frequencies which lets your tone breathe. Be aware that you will have to adjust the volume accordingly when turning this knob.
• FUZZ: Goes from “a little” to “a lot.” There are a ton of different flavours on tap, and the Giygas is equipped with a small “treble retention circuit” that keeps the chime present even when Fuzz is at zero. Rolling the Fuzz control back brings all sorts of lower-gain garage rock textures to the surface.

Requires 9VDC centre negative supply. Draws approx 18ma

The GIYGAS manual is here and Catalinbread profile here