BLAMMO! Buzzaround

The BLAMMO! Buzzaround is a germanium fuzz pedal from BLAMMO! Electronics, a small builder working out of Portland, Oregon. It is a recreation of the Baldwin-Burns Buzzaround, one of the rarest British fuzzes of the 1960s, and BLAMMO! says it stays true to the original by using NOS transistors and keeping all the component values the same¹. Where the vintage pedal had three controls, the BLAMMO! version adds a fourth: a master Volume knob that Delicious Audio described as improving the usability of the original design².

The pedal was announced in June 2022 as a limited edition of 25 units², so it is a scarce piece in its own right, in the spirit of the pedal it copies.

A germanium take on the Burns Buzzaround

The original Buzzaround was built by Baldwin-Burns Ltd. in England from 1966 to 1968¹. It was a three-transistor germanium fuzz box, using three NKT213 germanium transistors, housed in a folded steel enclosure painted in dark gray Hammerite³. Its circuit has an interesting lineage: fuzzboxes.org and BLAMMO! both trace it back to the Harmonic Generator, a circuit by Gerry Pope of G.P. Electronics that Baldwin Burns then copied for its own Buzzaround⁴.

The Buzzaround's controls were updated from the Tone Bender to include Balance, Timbre and Sustain, which British Pedal Company says gave the user a larger sonic scope than its predecessors⁵. Delicious Audio notes that the original still inspires boutique builders with its tight low-end, mid bump and prolonged sustain⁶.

The BLAMMO! version keeps that circuit intact, with NOS MP38A germanium transistors in place of the original NKT213s and all component values unchanged¹. For players who want a Buzzaround circuit in a different form, the JMI Burns Buzzaround reissue is a separate, officially licensed option: a limited series of 50 faithful reproductions, hand-built in England under license from the Baldin company, using a steel chassis, tag board circuit and new old stock germanium transistors⁷.

The controls: Sustain, Timbre, Balance and Volume

The pedal carries the original three controls plus the added master Volume. Here is what each does, based on Delicious Audio's coverage of the pedal²:

The Balance knob is the one that behaves least like a conventional control. Because it starves the bias of one transistor, it changes the character of the fuzz as much as its level, from spluttering, gated textures to a full-on tone. On the original pedal, Balance simply controlled the volume of the pedal, per the British Pedal Company manual⁸. Timbre, meanwhile, works as a volume/tone contour in one, and on the original it is never fully off⁷⁹.

History and the limited run

The Baldwin-Burns Buzzaround was manufactured in relatively small numbers over the course of several years³. British Pedal Company puts it more starkly: only a handful of units were produced between 1966 and 1968, making them almost mythical to some collectors⁵. Fuzzboxes.org notes that potentiometers in the earliest known surviving pedals date to September 1966, and that the pedal was still being built by early 1969³. A single "Baldwin" fuzz box found in the United States, believed to be a prototype for an American version, runs from a lower supply voltage but is based on the British schematic³.

That scarcity is what makes the pedal a target for recreations. Delicious Audio calls the original rare, able to fetch high prices, and notes it is often said that Robert Fripp used one¹⁰¹¹. BLAMMO!'s answer was announced on June 8, 2022: a limited run of 25 units, listed at the time as coming soon².

BLAMMO! Electronics is on a mission, as Delicious Audio put it, to build variants of vintage fuzz circuits². The Buzzaround sits alongside the builder's other recreations, including the Skronk Machine, a modernized take on the Zonk Machine, and the P2P Tone Bender MKi, a point-to-point build of the classic Tone Bender.

Power, switching and enclosure

The pedal runs on a standard 2.1mm center negative power supply, Boss style, with a current draw of 38mA¹. Switching is relay based true bypass: BLAMMO! upgraded the standard 3PDT style footswitch to a relay system that the maker says will not make the loud pop associated with mechanical footswitches¹. The pedal sits in a 125b enclosure measuring 4.8 x 2.6 x 1.58 inches, with top mounted jacks¹.

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