Crazy Tube Circuits Falcon Overdrive

A bit of backstage info… back in 2016 we built a custom amp that was designed to morph between the sounds of a 5E3 Tweed Deluxe and a 6G2 Brownface Princeton. We liked the sound and feel of the amp so much that we decided to capture it in a pedal format.

 

Falcon was designed as a painstakingly close emulation of the circuits found in these amps. With every detail in mind we copied the behavior, sound and feel of the preamp, phase inverter and power amp of both these designs. Applying JFET technology we managed to recreate not only the overdriven sounds but the lower gain / clean sounds as well.

 

The most important part was emulating the compression and sag coming out of the power amp and tube rectifier respectively. This effect enhances the pedal’s dynamic, musical feel and makes it very responsive to your picking attack. Depending on amp mode setting and your guitar / pickup’s output this effect can be more or less pronounced.