California’s Spruce Effects has been very active in 2020 with a new series of pedals called “Americana Series,” but the Arborist is actually an evolution of one of their older designs – and, more precisely, the silicon side of their now discontinued Giganteum Drive.
While the original version had three knobs to control Volume, Tone and Gain, V2, as requested by many users, replaces the Tone control with independent passive treble and bass controls.
Another new feature is the 3-way voicing switch delivering 3 modes: smooth, dynamic, and comp.
These are based on a unique germanium feedback/diode clipping arrangement and expand the sonic palette of this overdrive in unique and compatible ways.
Check out the video of the Spruce Effects The Arborist V2 below – the section at the bottom is about V1.
Spruce Effects The Arborist V2, Builder’s Notes
The Arborist was born as the silicon side of the former Giganteum Drive, offering excellent discrete transistor tones to color your sound and provide an awesome base for light drive and gain stacking.
For The Arborist V2, we went back to the drawing board and implemented a lot of feedback we got from you all! The second version retains the original tones of V1 at certain settings, but has way more variety and flexibility. We’ve expanded the tone stack to include independent passive treble and bass controls and we’ve added a versatile 3-way voicing switch with 3 distinct modes: smooth, dynamic, and comp. They are based on a unique germanium feedback/diode clipping arrangement and are balanced enough to switch on the fly, but unique enough to allow for extremely fine tuning by interacting with the other controls.
Features/Improvements
- Switchcraft Jacks
- High quality Taiway toggle
- Premium Gorva true bypass footswitch
- Enclosure printed and milled in the USA
- Hand wired and assembled in California
- Standard negative ground power
- Improved noise floor
- Improved RF filtering
- Various small circuit stability improvements
- More stable biasing
- Added low-pass filter on output to reduce harsh highs
CONTROLS
- Top-mounted jacks, input on right, output on left
- True-bypass stomp switch is on/off, indicated by LED
- “Volume” controls the amount of output (a lot)
- “Gain” controls the gain of the dual transistor stages for tube-amp like overdrive at reasonable volumes
- “Treble” and “Bass” controls work very similarly to the famous Fender Bassman 5f6A tone stack. They are very interactive and allow for fine tuning of highs and lows in the different voicing positions
- 3-way voicing toggle to change clipping characteristics
- Power
We always recommend isolated power supplies. If you daisy chain effects on one supply or use a low-quality product, you may inject noise, ripple, ground loop hum, etc. This effect requires 9v, center negative power. In other words, the industry standard power supply. Current draw: 2.6mA
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Spruce Effects The Arborist Overdrive V1
Spruce Effects The Arborist V1, Builder’s Notes
The Arborist was born as the silicon side of the former Giganteum Drive, offering excellent discrete transistor tones in the same package as our Germanium boost. We’ve repackaged the circuit in a familiar top-mount jack and slim enclosure for more pedalboard friendly use. The Arborist is a perfectly balanced medium gain drive pedal that is mostly happy pushing your tube amp into sweet overdrive or as a tone shaping tool in drive stacking. You can dial the gain all the way back and use the loads of gain on tap with the volume control to annihilate the front end of your amp. Dial the volume back and turn the gain control up to get that sweet, sweet transistor overdrive. The tone control is wired in classic Spruce Effects fashion, with thin and trebly CCW, and beefy and low-end heavy on the CW side. Use the fat toggle to add low-mids in to perfectly match your guitar and amp needs.
- Switchcraft Jacks
- True Bypass
- Enclosure printed and drilled in the USA
- Hand wired and assembled in California
- Standard negative ground power
Controls
- Top-mounted jacks, input on right, output on left
- True-bypass stomp switch is on/off, indicated by LED
- “Volume” controls the amount of output (a lot)
- “Gain” controls the gain of the dual transistor stages for tube-amp like overdrive at reasonable volumes
- “Tone” is a low-pass filter
- The “fat” toggle switch adds low-mids back in for even more beef when you need it
Power
We always recommend isolated power supplies. If you daisy chain effects on one supply or use a low-quality product, you may inject noise, ripple, ground loop hum, etc. This effect requires 9v, center negative power. In other words, the industry standard power supply.
