Badlands National Park is a magical, haunting, and inspiring place. Much like how one feels the first time seeing the vastness of the Grand Canyon, Badlands' peaks, spires, and canyons take your breath away and give a sense of endless, untouched expanse. Established as a National Park in 1978, Badlands is home to American Bison and the elusive, highly-endangered Black-footed ferret.
We love fuzz. That's no secret. We love it so much, we've built most of our brand around the warm fuzzy tones only vintage Germanium transistors can provide. Fuzz isn't it though. Not even close. In a sea of digitally controlled modulation, we set out to design a fresh take on classic '60s phaser, chorus, and vibrato sounds using the finest modern and NOS components money can buy. Badlands is a staggered, 4 stage optical, phase, chorus, and vibrato effect, employing a 100% analog design, using an 18v incandescent bulb, matched, custom-purpose-built LDRs, and the best on-board power supply and filtering circuit we could muster. It provides loads of warm, throbbing pulses, swirls, and lo-fi sweep. In addition to the modulation, we've added a finely-tuned Germanium gain stage at the output, utilizing a powerful, hand-matched 1960's Matsushita Germanium transistor. Having extra gain and tone control at the output allows you to dial in your dirt chain and explore a whole new world not normally associated with this type of effect. Note: Badlands is NOT a straight historical or modern clone of the Univibe (TM) pedal. We have made significant improvements to the preamp, output mixer, and the fine-tuning options for the LFO/Lamp.
Switchcraft and Lumberg Jacks
Demont soft-touch mechanical switch
Proprietary turret+PCB design
NOS 1960's Matsushita Germanium transistor
NOS Ero, Vishay, Philips, CDE, Sprague, Dearborn, Siemens and other premium quality audio-grade capacitors
Dale Military spec metal film resistors
Custom etched Red Oak lamp cover
Silver-coated solid core teflon and shielded Mogami wire
Hand-wired and assembled in California
Custom tin 'lunch box' carrying case
Hand silk-screened customized ID tag
Custom maple and steel etched bartender's bottle opener
Custom art print and instruction card
The first 15-20 units will ship with a "premium" vintage souvenir artifact (examples in pictures)
The remaining units will ship with a vintage Badlands photograph or post card
Controls
First row of knobs (Northwestern most): Depth and Gain
Depth controls the output frequency response. Clockwise is beefy and bassy and Counter-Clockwise is thin and trebley.
Gain controls the output Germanium gainstage level. It helps add more color and volume to your signal as well as providing enough juice to compliment a dirty amp or fuzz section.
Second row of knobs: Mod Volume, Speed, IntensityDepth, Bias, Fuzz
The Modulation Volume controls the overall volume of the modulation portion of the circuit. It is directly before the output Germanium gainstage.
Speed controls the speed of the modulation in either toggle setting.
Intensity controls the overall presence of modulation in the sound.
Toggle
The tiny little toggle between the input jack and 9v DC jack goes between Chorus and Vibrato modes.
Power
It is CRITICAL that you use a high quality, isolated and filtered power supplies with The Americana Series. Every modern measure was taken to ensure quiet, recording-worthy noise suppression, but low-quality power and power supplies can inject unwanted noise in these effects and cause compatibility issues. Even though we've designed them to play nicely on a daisy chain, we don't recommend it. Current draw: approx. 60mA.
Demo
Returns are not accepted on small batch effects like The Americana Series.
