As part of Spaceman's 15th Anniversary Celebrations it's releasing a further evolved IIb Deluxe take of its Sputnik Germanium Fuzz - with a 48 hour preorder window

The original Spaceman I first came out in 2013, with the much larger Sputnik II materialising in 2017, and then the mid-size Sputnik III arriving a few years later in 2020. I missed out on the Spaceman I upon its original release, but picked up a pristine Red Cyrillic version of that in 2018 - which eagle eyed reader will note is my favourite American fuzz (vis-a-vis The Fuzz Pedal Olympics!).

I had the opportunity to get the Sputnik II at the time of release, but always felt that its expanded enclosure was not optimal for my needs - just a little too large to easily fit on the board / somewhat non-pedalboard friendly. While 2020’s Sputnik III was pretty much perfect. I am very happy with my Sputnik I and III.

Now we have a reissue and evolution of the Type II format - in fact specifically the Type ’IIb’, which has some added features and controls. Where the overall topology is pretty similar - and the 4 knobs are largely the same as before - just with the ’Signal’ label changed to ’Level’ - same thing really just with a different label, - while Scan (Chaos Scrambler), Calibrate (Tone/EQ), and Range (Gain) are all the same. As are the 2 Drift and Bypass Footswitches.

The key changes are in the mid-section - where the Type II had High and Low Filter Switches, and the new Type IIb has Voice, X-Former, and Low toggle switches - so presumably a Low cut filter in common :

• Voice : A / C / B (Calibration Tone Options) - not too dissimilar to the High Filter in the II edition
• X-Former : On / Off (Bypass the Transformer for even wilder sounds)
• Low : 3 / 1 / 2 (Three levels of Bass response)

Obviously you get very slightly more granular control with this new edition - while the Sputnik I and III are already pretty perfect as they are for my own purposes and preferences.

I’m not convinced the Sputnik II needed further updates - but I guess those that favour larger footprint pedals have something to be happy about, Those specially selected Soviet Germanium Transistors sound pretty spectacular. I’m not convinced there was a latent demand for this. Certainly for my preferences it’s somewhat on the larger side.

There’s lots of pedals out there that I admire - but they aren’t necessarily perfect for my own needs - and this Sputnik IIb definitely gets filed with those nice-to-haves.

It’s of course a fairly pricey proposition at $399 - but about what you would expect, and it comes in 3 colourway variants - Black, Grey and White. Somewhat uniquely for Spaceman Effects though - they’ve decided to offer these on a [48 hour preorder window] - so that anyone who wants one can order one up until 23:59 tomorrow night, presumably PST Time on Saturday 16th of this month. You pay a $39 preorder deposit, and then the $360 balance when your order is ready to ship in a few weeks’ time.

I think there will be plenty of takers, but this edition is not really for me.

There’s no video to accompany the preorder announcement, so I will simple reference each of my favourite demos for the 3 previous iterations of this pedal!

Sputnik IIb Features

• Unique germanium fuzz, powered by NOS Soviet-era germanium transistors and diodes
• Foot-switchable DRIFT Mode for wild oscillation, octave and 8-bit artifact tones
• Switchable input transformer: Out = Looser feel + wider freq. range; In = Plays nice after other pedals + more focused
• VOICE switch provides three voicing options for the CALIBRATION tone control
• LOW switch provides three levels off bass response
• Unique, discrete all-analog circuit using through-hole components
• Completely soldered and wired by hand in Portland, Oregon
• True-Bypass switching
• Heavy duty engraved vinyl faceplate
• Large ’jewel’ indicator lights
• Three signed and numbered color options : Black, Grey and White
• MAP : $399