Cusack Music releases Screamer V3 overdrive with metal film capacitors

January 1, 2023 · 3 sources

Cusack Music has released the Cusack Screamer V3, an overdrive pedal that the maker says carries no new features over the previous version and differs in its capacitors, which are now metal film rather than ceramic¹. The maker dates the V1 20 years earlier and frames the change as a test of a claim about parts and tone¹.

The maker writes that founder Jon Cusack built the V1 with ceramic capacitors after hearing talk that metal film caps made a big difference in tone, and that the V3 exists "only to prove a point - it sounds exactly the same"¹. The maker states the metal film parts are less microphonic and less affected by temperature changes, but adds that gig temperatures fall within ceramic tolerances and that, to its ears, those are the only differences¹.

The maker describes the Screamer as a clean overdrive with about twice the gain of a typical Tube Screamer¹. Controls are Drive for gain and overdrive, Tone for balance (left bassier, right brighter) and Level for output, plus a three-way toggle: silicon diodes at left, LED in the middle for what the maker calls a louder, punchier, brighter overdrive, and Schottky diodes at right for a crushed, compressed tone¹. The V2 page lists the same three clipping positions, describing the center as asymmetrical LED².

The V2 page lists that model as discontinued, with a current draw of ~9mA and the same dimensions². Delicious Audio reported the V3 on Jan. 25, 2023, describing it as redesigned with metal film capacitors instead of ceramic ones and quoting the maker's account of the swap³.