Hungry Robot announces The Stampede CMOS fuzz

September 1, 2023 · 2 sources

Hungry Robot announced The Stampede, a two-knob fuzz built on a 4069 CMOS chip, in a product page on its site. Delicious Audio reported the pedal on September 1, 2023, describing it as "the company's latest device, a 2-knob pedal called [The Stampede]"¹.

The maker describes the circuit as "a glitchy, square-wave CMOS fuzz" and says CMOS fuzzes "work by taking your signal and transforming it into a square wave which makes it sound like a synth"². The Stampede has a fixed 3-band active EQ, with the low pass and high pass "running hot" and the band pass "subtly scooping out the midrange," according to the maker².

The large knob controls volume and the small knob sets sensitivity, which "dials in the volume of the signal before it hits the front end of the CMOS chip"². The maker says the sensitivity range runs "from barely registering to self-oscillation," and that at maximum the chip picks up floor noise and converts it into a square wave². Delicious Audio reports that lower sensitivity settings can produce "sputtering to sub-octave hints," while a maxed setting "will deliver self-ocsillation and extra unwanted noise"¹. The maker also says the guitar's tone knob acts as a low-pass filter that adjusts the smoothness of the fuzz without affecting the output sound².

Delicious Audio noted that Hungry Robot "got us used to very 'knobby' pedals," making the two-knob layout a departure for the company¹.