God City Instruments releases the Brutalist high-gain distortion pedal
February 9, 2024 · 3 sources
The God City Instruments Brutalist was covered by Delicious Audio on February 9, 2024, and by Guitar Pedal X on February 8, 2024. God City Instruments is described by Delicious Audio as the project of Kurt Ballou, guitarist of Converge and owner of a Massachusetts studio of the same name1. Delicious Audio reports the pedal was designed in collaboration with Electronic Audio Experiment1.
The Brutalist is a high-gain distortion with a boost-only active two-band Baxandall EQ21. Delicious Audio reports the main distortion is "akin to a cranked amp" and runs on 18V internal headroom from a standard 9V power supply, drawing 150mA minimum1. The EQ's flat settings for bass and treble sit counterclockwise, tuned to be subtle so the pedal works with clean and dirty amps1. A left footswitch, called the Filth footswitch by Guitar Pedal X, runs the distortion through a band-pass filter at the beginning of the circuit and an all-pass filter at the output13. Delicious Audio says the band-pass allows cocked-wah or aggressive chainsaw sounds and its wide frequency range suits bassists, while the all-pass acts somewhat like a parked phaser1.
Guitar Pedal X lists the controls as Level, Treble, Distortion, Filter A (band-pass), Bass, Filter B (all-pass/phase), Filth footswitch and bypass footswitch3. RockBoard's PedalPedia lists the circuit as analog, running at 9V DC center negative and 150mA2.
"Its a high gain distortion with a boost-only active Baxandall EQ, but the real magic is in the band-pass and all-pass filters which work in tandem to create deeply affected distortion textures ranging from massively scooped brickwalls of fuzz, to cocked-wah lofi lead tones, to almost saw-like bass tones."
God City Instruments describes the pedal as the product of over 10 years of development and distinguishes it from earlier versions: "Not Brutalist Jr., not BJR, this is BRUTALIST!"2. Guitar Pedal X names the BJR Compact as an earlier version and says the circuit is reportedly a John Snyder design3.
Guitar Pedal X put the listed price at circa $259 and reported that the first batch on the God City Instruments webstore had sold out3. No US list price is given in the sources.