Drunk Beaver's 11th Pedal Drop - the Cherkasy Fuzz - is an extended range medium gain Silicon Fuzz Face based on the Anta Fuzz-Wah from the Soviet era Riga factory

Drunk Beaver’s Vitalii has an unerring knack for uncovering notable classic and cult pedals from yesteryear - and this time around he’s unearthed a rare gem from Latvia - which was essentially a 2-Transistor Silicon Fuzz / Distortion made in circa 1975 - with relatively low-gain Transistors. The device had a shortened treadle-style wah enclosure - and was sort of the smaller sister to the Anita Fuzz-Wah. The Anta had only 2 controls - Volume and Gain, and by comparison the Cherkasy has quite a bit more about it with 5 controls - but not the wah-treadle of the original.

Controls - Level, Velcro (Gate), Fuzz (Gain), Sag (Starve), Body (Tight / Fat).

Connoisseurs of Drunk Beaver will recognise a number of the controls from being featured on other Drunk Beaver classics - like Taras Bulba’s Velcro knob - which increases the feedback between the transistors to cause more gating.

Sag is essentially a voltage starve - gradually reducing from 9V CCW to just 3V fully CW. And finally Body adjusts the Tightness and Fatness of the Low End - where you’re actually blending between 10μF and 22nF capacitors.

This two Transistor Silicon Fuzz - hence Fuzz Face in style - uses 2 Low Gain Silicon NPN Transistors - NOS CEMI (Unitra) BF214 (Hfe 100-130) and Motorola CG006 (Hfe 70-80. It has quite a distinct character and timbre which I really rather like!

As before this is a rapid prototyping project where only 15 of these will be available on the Drunk Beaver Reverb.com Store priced at $150 - as soon as you see this article - in fact I always recommend you follow the Drunk Beaver store direct anyway to get notifications direct from there.

In absence of a demo - I’ve references 2 YouTube videos of the source Anta Fuzz-Wah inspiration - that should give you suitable sound samples for what this pedal sounds like!