Death By Audio Harmonic Transformer

The Death By Audio Harmonic Transformer is a fuzz pedal made by Death By Audio, the Brooklyn-based builder whose range also includes the Fuzz War and the Absolute Destruction Fuzz. Like the rest of the company's fuzz line, it sits at the loud, abrasive end of the effect rather than the polite, amp-like end.

What it does

The Harmonic Transformer is a guitar effects pedal. One builder who cloned the circuit reported getting close to the original sound only with heavy modding and tweaking¹.

For a DIY perspective on the circuit, the effects-layout blog Tagboard Effects documented a build of the pedal in 2013. One contributor to that thread reported on how close a homemade version could get to the real thing¹:

The quote, cut off as published, suggests the circuit as commonly traced needed substantial modification before it matched the factory pedal's character, which tells a player something useful: the Harmonic Transformer's sound depends on component values and biasing that are not straightforward to copy, and the stock unit has its own tuned behavior¹.

Players comparing it against other Death By Audio fuzzes can look at the Supersonic Fuzz Gun or the Thee Ffuzz Warr Overload for the company's other takes on high-gain dirt.

Videos

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