The Champion Leccy The Dunsh is a new release by the British via Philly builder that started as a modification made to one section of the company’s own Gett and the Bloody Gett fuzzes, two Black Russian Big Muff variants. That mod was named “Dunsh” and added a “loud, noisy and bottom-endy fuzziness” to the signal.
The circuit gradually made its way from the back burner (when it was considered as a toggle option to be added to other circuits) to the… front burner (?), when it was decided to build a whole new pedal around it. Enter The Dunsh.
In the words of the manufacturer, the Dunsh is “an original design that features a ‘bells and whistles’ form of that original transistor gain stage from the Gett/ Canny Fettle Boost sandwiched between a few op-amp stages for filtering, gain and EQ.”
Or, in other words, a super flexible dirt box with a wide gain range (from boost to distortion), tons of volume, and plenty of tweakability thanks to its 6 knobs and 3 toggle switches.
The Dunsh is a little bit like the secret special weapon in this pedal: highlighted by a red knob, it’s triggered by the left footswitch and unleashes that devastatingly fat fuzziness described above.
When the Dunsh switch is off, the pedal can produce sounds from clean to distorted, but also open an dynamic fuzz tones, while with the Dunsh on, you get a much more powerful and saturated fuzz full of gain and sustain.
But the Dunsh mode is not the only special thing here: the EQ section features a two-band targeting Top and Bottom frequencies through two semi-parametric baxandall filters with three frequency choices each (lo, hi, mid), via two of the toggles. The toggle selection indicated where, in the frequency spectrum, the applied EQ knob will boost or cut from.
The Bias knob starves the circuit for those gated, sputtery tones, while the Gate switch is another 3-way switch that is more of a tone modifier than a noise reducer, doing, in the words of the builder, “some cool weird voicing thing.”
Three internal DIP switches allow us to tweak the low-end roll-off, the high-end roll-off and the Dunsh intensity.
Champion Leccy The Dunsh, Builder’s Notes
The first ‘dunsh’ was a modification I made to one section of the Black Russian Big Muff circuit that I used in the Gett and the Bloody Gett. It was a switch to add amp-smashingly loud, noisy and bottom-endy fuzziness.
It made a return in a slightly modified form as the second half of the Canny Fettle Boost a couple of years ago.
I’d been considering bringing back that dunsh section in some pedal form since we discontinued the Canny Fettle Boost. Initially the dunsh was going to be a key part of the End of Days Fuzz, but as the design progressed, it started looking more and more promising, so I decided to work on it as its own thing with the possibility of becoming a regular line. And so here we are!
Our next release will be a dedicated dunsh pedal called ‘The Dunsh’.
So what is this new ‘the Dunsh’ pedal?
The Dunsh is an original design that features a ‘bells and whistles’ form of that original transistor gain stage from the Gett/ Canny Fettle Boost sandwiched between a few op amp stages for filtering, gain and EQ.
I’m still trying to find the right description, because it covers a lot of ground, but it’s a super flexible and wide-ranging gain stage with a lot of EQ options.
It goes from clean boost to distortion, with stupid amounts of output.
It has some broad spanning EQ options
It has two controls for gating.
It has a second footswitch for the namesake ‘dunsh’ sound to step it up a notch. The Dunsh does not operate independently. It is an internal boost to one section of the circuit.
Anyway, here it is.
Check out this artless mock up!
The controls are
gain – gain.
bias – bias for that core transistor stage. As you turn it clockwise it will start to choke out. The more gain you add, the harder you have to push it to gate out. ALSO! When you’re all high gainy, you’ll notice as you turn it, you’ll hit a point where it acts as a noise gate. The noise floor will kindly vanish, which is handy and nice.
B and T – B stands for bottom. T stands for top.
This is the EQ section. There are two knobs and two 3-way switches. At noon the knobs aren’t doing anything. Turn clockwise to boost, anticlockwise to cut. B boosts or cuts bottom end, T cuts or boosts top end.
The B and T switches (directly below the knobs) are marked with lo, hi and mid for the three positions. This is where the corresponding knob boosts or cuts from.
These controls cover a lot of ground. I will be writing a lot more about these later, because as you can see from the confusing graph showing all the possibilities below, it’s a lot. But don’t worry, we’ll break it all down for you in an article before release.
gate – a 3 way switch that we smooshed in between the EQ switches that gates your signal and does some cool weird voicing thing. This gate also battles the gain control, the more gain, the less gating.
level – output volume
dunsh – this is a separate volume control for when you kick on the dunsh (the second footswitch) allowing you to set an independent level for it.
There are three ‘set and forget’ internal DIP switches. One for the low end roll off, one for the high end roll off and one for dunsh intensity. The settings on these really depend on what instrument/ style you’re playing.
There will be more information on how to set these appropriately by the time we get round to release. Man alive is it going to be a hell of a manual.
I’m really happy with the artwork on this one, but I’m holding off on a reveal until much closer to the release date.
I think that’s about it for now, but feel free to drop into the discord to ask more if you want to.
