The Cornerstone Nero Fuzz is a hybrid fuzz/overdrive circuit designed by an Italian builder that’s been churning out a series of impressive overdrive pedals, but no fuzzes until today. One of these overdrives is the company’s bestseller Gladio, an amp-in-a-box inspired by the rare line of Dumble amps. That circuit found its way inside Cornerstone’s first fuzz pedal.
In simple terms, the Nero is a pedal featuring a fuzz circuit running in parallel with a Dumble-style overdrive pedal, which means that your signal is split in two and fed separately to both circuits, rather than proceeding in series, i.e. one stacked one after the other. The Comp knob acts as a volume that turns up the Gladio side, while the fuzz volume is always the same. As you may expect, bringing up that overdriven channel lends some extra sensitivity and dynamics to the fuzz tone, which is normally much more compressed.
Using fuzz pedals in parallel with overdrives is often done in recording to sweeten the harsher quality of the fuzz and lend some more dynamics to it, and this pedal allows you to recreate that studio trick in a stompbox, with more control.
The other bigger knobs (Volume, Gain, and Tone) affect only the fuzz, allowing for more or less grit and also a fair amount of sculpting.
The Nero also provides two different, adjustable voicings, switchable via the Voice footswitch. Each voice has a separate knob that adjusts its bias, allowing switching between different two fuzz characters on the fly.
Here are the first videos of the Cornerstone Nero.
