Broughton Audio Bass Box

The Broughton Audio Bass Box is a germanium transistor fuzz pedal aimed at bass players. Broughton Audio describes its voice as having "massive low end, smooth textured mids, and present but not overly harsh highs," which is the balance a bassist needs from fuzz: enough grind to cut through without losing the bottom of the instrument¹.

The pedal is no longer available new. Broughton Audio states plainly that "This design is archived and is not in current production"¹.

Controls and how it shapes the sound

The Bass Box keeps its control set small: Fuzz, Presence, and Body. The Fuzz control varies the character of the fuzz from a sputtery gated fuzz to a massive fully harmonic fuzz, while the Presence and Body controls give you powerful tone shaping abilities, all the while leaving the solid fundamental intact¹.

The Fuzz control is the heart of the pedal. At one end it produces a gated, sputtering fuzz, the kind that stutters and cuts out between notes; at the other it opens up into what the maker calls a massive, fully harmonic fuzz with sustain and thickness¹. That spread means one knob covers both lo-fi, broken-signal textures and a big wall-of-fuzz sound.

The Presence and Body controls handle the frequency balance. Broughton Audio says they "give you powerful tone shaping abilities, all the while leaving the solid fundamental intact"¹. For a bass player, that claim matters more than it would for guitar: fuzz circuits can eat the fundamental and leave the low end thin, and a tone section designed to preserve it is the difference between a fuzz that works for bass and one that does not.

Power, bypass, and practical details

The Bass Box runs on a 9V DC power supply, which is not included with the pedal. The supply should be a standard Boss style connector with center negative polarity, the common arrangement on most pedalboard power supplies, and the current draw is approximately 10 mA, light enough to share a daisy chain or a modest isolated supply without strain¹.

The pedal uses a true bypass switch, so when it is off your signal passes through untouched rather than through a buffer¹. At 4.77" long by 2.6" wide it takes up a typical small-box footprint on a pedalboard¹.

Buying, warranty, and returns

The listed price on the maker's page is US$165.00¹. Because the design is archived, that price is a record of what the pedal sold for rather than a live offer. Broughton Audio ships orders internationally via Canada Post, with shipping cost calculated at check-out¹.

• Warranty: Products are covered for one year to the original owner; warranty repairs are handled by emailing sales@broughtonaudio.com¹.
• Returns: Email sales@broughtonaudio.com within 7 days of receiving the product; a refund is issued minus shipping cost when the item is received in new condition¹.

Where it sits among bass fuzz and distortion pedals

Germanium fuzz is a distinct branch of the fuzz family. Germanium transistors are temperature sensitive and have a softer, warmer clipping character than the silicon transistors used in many other fuzzes, which is part of why makers keep returning to them despite the practical drawbacks. The Bass Box takes that germanium voice and builds its tone controls around keeping the bass fundamental intact, where simpler fuzzes often offer little or no tone shaping at all.

For players comparing options in the same territory, other bass-focused dirt pedals take different approaches: the IdiotBox Blower Box Bass Distortion is a bass distortion with a Volume control and a Low cut/boost control for trimming the bottom end, and the Tronographic Rusty Box is a preamp-style unit with input gain, bass, middle and treble EQ, master volume, and a boost footswitch. The Bass Box sits closer to the classic fuzz end of that spectrum, with a germanium circuit and a two-knob tone section, than to EQ-heavy preamp designs²³¹.

Questions