Nysiad GermaniumFuzz

From the vendor

A variable-bias silicon & germanium fuzz designed to emulate “imminent amp death”, the sound of a blown power tube or output transformer right before it all goes up in smoke.

The Nysiad Germanium Fuzz is an adaptation of the Cornish NG-2, originally traced by Aion FX in 2024. While it has a lot in common with the later NG-3 (available as our Nysiad Silicon project), there are enough substantial differences that we split them into two different projects.

Like the NG-3, the NG-2 is designed to simulate “imminent amp death”, the sound of a bad output transformer or power tube right before the fuse blows (or worse). You can get some fairly traditional sounds from it if the bias knob is all the way up, but once you start to dial it down, the tone quickly turns into a glitchy mess, complete with gating, sag, feedback, velcro, instability, and anything else you’d associate with a misbiased fuzz.

The main difference in the NG-2 is the use of germanium transistors for the clipping stage, as compared to the silicon transistors in the NG-3. On the original NG-2, the bias control was an internal trimmer, but in this adaptation we made it external like the NG-3, which means that the transistors are the main difference between the two projects.

Other than the bias control, the Nysiad Germanium is identical to the NG-2 unit that we traced. As with our other Cornish-based projects, we have added an internal slide switch for a true bypass mode not found in the original.