Strymon Canoga Vintage Silicon Fuzz Guitar Effects Pedal

Brand new, in box.

Vintage Simplicity

Sometimes simple wins. Ten years ago Gregg built a few custom fuzzes in an afternoon as a way of clearing his head, and they’ve been gathering dust on a shelf ever since. Unearthed seven years later when Strymon needed a fuzz to pair with the UltraViolet vibe, that rediscovery became the catalyst for the creation of the new Series A line of all-analog pedals.

Canoga is a tweaked version of a vintage silicon FuzzFace based upon one of Gregg’s original three fuzz designs. Full up it works as a fuzz or distortion, but if you back the guitar’s volume down there’s a world of varied tones on tap for all different styles of music.

It’s All About The Sound

Canoga is a simple pedal to use — there’s one knob for Drive and one for output Level — but the interaction between the guitar and Canoga’s input is critical, as is the interaction between it and your amp. As with many fuzz pedals, Canoga works brilliantly plugged into an amp with a bit of hair on the tone already, similar to how Jimi Hendrix and other guitar greats of the 60s and 70s ran their rigs.

Additional versatility comes from the interaction between your guitar’s volume knob and the pedal’s input. Traditionally, unbuffered fuzz pedals like to be connected directly to your guitar, so that the circuitry can “see” your guitar’s pickups and volume pot. Full up on both of Canoga’s pots and your guitar volume pot gets you the full fuzz experience, and rolling back the volume on the guitar opens up a new world of semi-clean blues, rock, Americana and pop sounds. The rolled back sound stays clear in the high frequencies and doesn’t get muddy, so you might find that Canoga allows you to convincingly play riffs that you would normally employ a distortion pedal for, not a fuzz.

Series A

Strymon’s ‘Series A’ line of pure analog pedals gives their analog design team an outlet, and Canoga joins Fairfax as the second pedal in the series. Series A designs offer something different from traditional Strymon offerings — no MIDI, USB, firmware or digital processing. Unabashedly analog.

Controls and Routing

• Drive — Controls the amount of distortion
• Level — Controls the output level
• Input — High impedance audio input
• Output — Low impedance audio output
• 9VDC — Use a power supply rated 9VDC, center negative, 50mA minimum (sold separately). IMPORTANT: voltages higher than 9VDC can damage the pedal.

Features

• Tweaked version of a vintage silicon FuzzFace style fuzz pedal
• High frequency response stays clear when the guitar’s volume is rolled back
• Wide range of gain for different styles of music
• Internal jumper sets the initial power up state, either bypassed or engaged

Specs

• 100% analog circuit
• True bypass
• Mono In/Out
• Dimensions: 4.53” deep x 2.83” wide x 2.33” tall (11.51 cm x 7.19 cm x 5.92 cm)
• Power requirements: maximum 9VDC center negative, minimum 50mA (power supply sold separately)