The Calamity is an homage to the Civil War fuzz, with many added features to expand the usability of this classic design.
 
Features include:
High impedance input - can be used with active or passive basses
Low passed blend - blend in your lowest clean tones for even more low end punch
Variable mids - scoop the mids like in the stock circuit, or add them back in
Three clipping modes give a variety of distortion tones
Very low noise compared to traditional BMP designs
Low impedance output - behaves well with other pedals, preamps, and amplifiers
Accepts up to 24V DC
 
Detailed Description
 
Many bass players turn to the Civil War variant of the Big Muff Pi fuzz circuit due to it's excellent low end response and heavy distortion tones. The Civil War can be a bit of a one-trick pony, and it usually sounds best with a passive bass. The Calamity is a tribute to the strengths of the Civil War fuzz, but with many improvements that give bass players a palette of distortion tones.
 
The high input impedance transistor circuit allows the Calamity to be used with active or passive instruments, and can be used after other pedals without signal degradation. While the core of the distortion circuit is similar to the Civil War design, the second stage of clipping has been replaced with a Clip switch, varying between LEDs (toggle down), silicon diodes (toggle up), or no diodes (toggle in the middle). Use the silicon diodes for the stock Civil War sound, the LEDs for a brash distortion tone, or no diodes for more of a touch sensitive transistor distortion.
 
The Tone control is a tilt EQ as in the original design, but a Mids knob has been added. Turning the Mids knob up adds in middle frequencies that are absent in the original.
 
A clever feature that has been added is the Blend knob, which is a low passed boosted version of your input signal. This allows you to dial in an underlying clean low end to the fuzz output, giving you the percussive low end punch that is typically absent with fuzz pedals. Because it is low passed, the signal blends well with the distortion, unlike some pure clean blends that sound like two separate signals.
 
The Calamity uses high quality, low noise components. The noise floor is surprisingly low for a fuzz pedal. The output of the Calamity is low impedance, not affected by the Volume control, meaning the pedal will behave well with other devices, without any tone degradation or impedance mismatches.
 
The pedal requires a 9V DC power supply (not included). The DC supply should be a standard Boss style connector, center negative polarity. The current draw is approximately 10 mA. The power supply may be increased up to 24V DC, but does not drastically change the sound of the pedal.
 
The Calamity has a true bypass switch.
 
Dimensions: 4.77" long x 2.6" wide