– Don’t Fear the Dark –

The Chthonic Fuzz (pronounced ‘THAW-nik’) starting out as an exploration of a vintage 60’s one knob Fuzz Box. The stellar clean-up with the guitar volume knob is what captured our attention. But the Chthonic quickly mutated into something else. In 2017 Parker Coons built a veroboard prototype shown below, but we decided to take the design even further.

The addition of a gain (Fuzz) control allowed increased versatility, and then the addition of a subtle tone control (Lustre) increased it’s range even more. These changes, as well as moving to modern 2N222 transistors retains the tight grain fuzz tones that interested us in the original circuit, but gives the Chthonic its own voice.

The Chthonic is tuned a little darker, primarily for bright amps, single-coil, P90, Gold-Foil, DeArmond, and Strat pickups in mind. While lending weight to lead lines, it also imparts thickness to chords. Since the Chthonic Fuzz is a two transistor fuzz, like many other vintage-style fuzzes, it works best first in the chain. Due to this sensitivity, the Chthonic cleans up incredibly quickly and well with the guitar volume knob. There are in-between OD/Fuzz/Clean tones available that could easily become your new core guitar tone.

The Chthonic Fuzz is conceptually the Carcosa’s dark twin. With that in mind we enlisted the artist that originally designed the Carcosa’s graphics to design the Chthonic’s awakening Kraken/Cthulhu graphic. The Chthonic Fuzz is for players who are looking for a fuzz that responds and feels like a vintage fuzz, but has modern tonal versatility, and more controlled

fuzz tones.