Mask Audio Electronics Clubber Lang

The Mask Audio Electronics Clubber Lang is a fuzz pedal built around a MOSFET input stage and asymmetrical soft clipping, designed with Malaise Forever as a modern take on the Interfax HP-1 Harmonic Percolator. Mask Audio Electronics calls it "a love letter to the harmonic percolator but adds some improvements for the modern player," with the MOSFET stage added "to push some wild texture out of the circuit"¹². It sits in the crowded field of fuzz pedals that trace their lineage to the Percolator, but it is an interpretation of that circuit rather than a copy.

What it does to your signal

The circuit runs through two gain stages with distinct characters. The MOSFET input stage is the first, and its BURN control sets how hard it is driven. After it comes the fuzz stage itself, which uses asymmetrical germanium soft clipping, meaning the signal is clipped differently on its positive and negative halves, the approach Delicious Audio's Paolo De Gregorio highlights in his write-up of the pedal³. The design also has increased low end output compared with the original Percolator concept, along with what De Gregorio calls "a widely effective tone control"³.

Mask Audio Electronics emphasizes that the pedal is highly interactive: "There is a lot of interactivity between all of the knobs on the pedal and all of the knobs on your instrument. Clubber Lang rewards the detailed tweakers and pedal stackers"¹. In practice that means your guitar's volume and tone controls are part of the circuit, and the pedal responds differently depending on where they are set and what feeds it.

The controls: BURN, MORE, TONE and LOUD

BURN and MORE work as a pair of gain stages you can balance against each other. Pedal of the Day's review of the original Malaise Forever version described the same arrangement: "Burn and Harm control the MOSFET gain stage and the fuzz stage gain, respectively"⁴. On the Mask Audio version the fuzz stage gain control is labeled MORE.

Power

Mask Audio Electronics specifies that the Clubber Lang "should be powered by a 9V center negative power adapter"¹. That is the standard polarity for most pedalboard power supplies, so a normal isolated 9V output will suit it.

From the Harmonic Percolator to a Malaise Forever design

The Clubber Lang began as a Malaise Forever pedal. Designer Zac described the intent in his own words: "CLUBBER LANG is my love letter to the Interfax Harmonic Percolator, with some changes"³. Delicious Audio reports that the circuit exists in V1 and V2 versions, and that "the circuit's V2 was reworked in collaboration with Mask Audio Electronics," which is the version sold on the Mask Audio page³. The V2 hardware includes Lumberg audio jacks³.

The Interfax HP-1 Harmonic Percolator has inspired a number of interpretations. Guitar Pedal X, surveying pedals in that tradition, listed the Malaise Forever Clubber Lang among them, with controls of Level, Tone and Harmonics on that version⁵. Pedal of the Day, reviewing a Harmonic Percolator clone from Paperboy Pedals, noted other circuits in the same family: "A few we've seen besides this one from Paperboy Pedals are the Nine of Swords Headache, one from Bowman Audio Endeavors," along with the Malaise Forever Clubber Lang and the Vaderin Pedals HP-X². Other Percolator-inspired pedals covered on this site include the Land Devices HP-2 Harmonic Percolator, which Delicious Audio describes as "a harmonic percolator equivalent"⁶.

Pedal of the Day's review of the original Clubber Lang was favorable, calling "the Clubber Lang Harmonic Percolator Fuzz a true force to be reckoned with"⁴.

For more from the same maker, see the Mask Audio Electronics Cascader, the Black Math, or the Malaise Forever Clubber Lang page for the original version of this circuit.

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