Crazy Tube Circuits

The company began not as a business but as a hobbyist. Commenting as CrazyTubeCircuits on a DIY pedal-building blog, the maker wrote¹:

That DIY background shows in the company's habits: its circuits borrow openly from classic pedals and amps, and one of its own pedals, the Ziggy, was later reverse engineered by its designer and laid out for home builders¹.

From DIY clones to a Greek pedal maker

The founder spent years building clones of pedals he liked before turning the hobby into a company, and posted the preliminary schematic of the Black Magic overdrive (a Doctor Boogey derivative) to the DIY community more than a decade before the blog post that records it¹. By 2015 the Stardust Overdrive was being covered as a finished product by Pedal of the Day⁶, and by 2023 gearnews.com was calling the company "the Greek pedal forge Crazy Tube Circuits, CTC for short"⁷.

The clone heritage stayed visible in the catalog. The Motherload, an all-analog distortion and fuzz pedal, puts a Big Muff-style circuit and a Rat-style circuit in one box, switched by a toggle in the middle and sharing Volume and Gain knobs⁷⁸. The Cyclone phaser emulates four classic vintage phasers⁹. The Unobtanium pairs what the maker calls "a mythical overdrive" with "the tone and feel of two iconic amplifiers"¹⁰.

Twin-circuit pedals and the White Whale line

Two ideas run through the range: two circuits in one enclosure, and real components where most makers use substitutes¹¹.

Twin-circuit pedals. The Motherload is an all-analog distortion and fuzz pedal, with both sides switched via a toggle switch in the middle and shared Volume and Gain knobs⁷. The Ziggy v2 runs two separate overdrive and distortion channels, low and high gain, each with its own controls¹². The Hi Power is another addition to the company's twin-pedal range, with top mounted jacks¹³¹⁴.

The White Whale line. The original White Whale is listed as discontinued, old stock, with B-stock units sold out¹⁵. The line continues:

The maker frames the line as a continuing pursuit: "The White Whale has always represented an endless pursuit of tone"².

The design side

The company's designers come out of the DIY world rather than corporate engineering. The Ziggy's own designer, Giorgos Ziotas, reverse engineered his own pedal for the home-build community, with the schematic drawn by Nocentelli and the layout verified by Hozy31¹. That openness is unusual among commercial makers and means several CTC circuits circulate freely among builders.

Power requirements vary across the range and are worth checking per pedal. The Super Conductor boost takes 9V DC only, with a warning not to use a higher voltage supply¹⁸. The Space Charged V2, a real 12AY7 tube overdrive, is discontinued, old stock, sold out¹⁹, and the analog Space Charged draws 430mA²⁰, far beyond what a shared daisy chain can supply. The Motherload draws 35mA with true bypass⁸, and the Crossfire Overdrive draws 83mA²¹.

Players who use Crazy Tube Circuits pedals

The maker's artist page states plainly:

The TI:ME delay shows the company's range beyond gain pedals. Crazy Tube Circuits released it in June 2021²², and it sits alongside analog designs like the Motherload in a catalog that covers overdrives, fuzz, boost, modulation and delay. The player list is broad: Bill Frisell, Brad Whitford, Nels Cline, and Lee Ranaldo all use Crazy Tube Circuits products, and Nels Cline in particular is a big fan of their pedals.

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