Zander Circuitry Terra Firma Distortion

Our heaviest distortion to date, the Terra Firma packs a huge punch of pure, unadulterated power-amp distortion. Voiced specifically for down-tuned guitars, it’s perfect for capturing those big, beefy (and slightly fuzzy) stoner and doom rock tones. It also has a monstrous amount of volume on tap that’ll really get those speakers shaking.

We set out with the goal of creating something for those playing those slower/heavier types of music, as well as something that would give you that huge sound with both smaller rigs, as well as the usual backline of multiple 4x12s, and we’ve nailed it if we do say so ourselves.

The Terra Firma is based around the LM386 power amp chip (the same one used in a few power amp distortions such as the EQD Acapulco Gold) which offers the perfect blend of character and raw output volume to add a bunch of additional supporting circuitry to.

In addition to the regular level and gain controls, the Terra Firma offers many other controls that allow you to tweak the tone to your setup. Body controls the amount of bass and lower mids, Tone offers controls over the highs, and Shift works interactively to fine tune the focus of the tone control’s filtering shifting between a treble/highs focus and an upper mids focus.

The Terra Firma also features our signature diode rotary switch, which lets you choose between eight clipping types for added versatility:

• Germanium: Smooth, sweet, and classically ‘amp-like’.
• Silicon: Louder, brighter, and a little bit brittle.
• LED: Louder again, with less saturation and more punch.
• Asymmetrical germanium: A more aggressive version of germanium.
• Asymmetrical silicon: A more aggressive version of silicon.
• Asymmetrical LED: A more aggressive version of LED.
• Transistor/MOSFET: Similar to silicon, but sweeter and crunchier.
• No diodes: Loads of output and much less gain.

On this pedal the diode rotary will be more/less obvious depending on where the pedal’s internal master volume trimpot is set, as stock we set it a bit lower so you can really get a feel for the differences.

For thos wanting to switch between low and high gain settings, the Terra Firma’s Blast footswitch turns the gain all the way up, and activates a second volume control for seamless transitions between low and high-gain sounds.