Mythos Golden Fleece

The Mythos Golden Fleece is a one-knob fuzz pedal from Mythos Pedals, the company run by Zach Broyles. Mythos describes it as "a do it all dirt box that perfectly blends Fuzz, Distortion, and Overdrive into one little golden box of fun"¹. Where most fuzzes lean hard one way, this one is built to sit in the gap between an overdrive and a full fuzz, with a single control deciding how far it goes.

The design is unusual for a fuzz. Instead of the pair of transistors that circuits like the Fuzz Face use, the Golden Fleece gets its clipping from a silicon and germanium diode pair, and Mythos says Zach chose "a very special NOS Germanium diode that gives the Golden Fleece its unique and versatile fuzz voice"¹. Delicious Audio, reviewing it in 2018, called it "an incredibly simple circuit that skirts the line between overdrive and fuzz"².

A simple fuzz between overdrive and fuzz

The Golden Fleece keeps its control surface to a single knob. Mythos describes it plainly: "More - Controls the output of the pedals. The rest is up to you."¹ Everything else about the voice is fixed in the circuit, which is the point of the design. Premier Guitar's Blair White called it "a fine-tuned machine with a minimum of options," where "all the tough decision making has already been done and built into a germanium-and-silicon-based circuit"⁴.

With the knob wide open, Mythos says the pedal delivers "a powerful blooming fuzz sound that sounds great hitting a pushed amplifier"¹. At lower settings it backs off toward crunch, and reviewers found a wide usable range in between. On That Pedal Show, Dan and Mick characterized it as a single-transistor pedal that "spans over drive and fuzz super simple"⁵.

Guitar Pedal X's Stefan Karlsson placed it in the fuzzy-drive category rather than pure fuzz, describing "a somewhat woolly fuzzy-drive character" and noting it is "quite a warm sounding Silicon variant" compared with a germanium mini fuzz listed alongside it⁶.

Where the circuit came from

The Golden Fleece is a tweaked version of an obscure circuit. Mythos says it was "inspired by a little known fuzz box called the 'Fuzzy Nuts'"¹, and the company's own Au79 page describes the Golden Fleece as "a clone of a incredibly simple fuzz unit"⁷⁸. The Fuzzy Nuts circuit was designed by Alan Yee, and JHS Pedals explains the lineage: "My good friend Zach Broyles at Mythos Pedals took the 'Fuzzy Nuts' circuit, tweaked it and created a really awesome" pedal³. JHS sums up the original design as "basically a Fuzz Face without any of the shortcomings and it's $139"³.

The pedal the circuit traces back to had a famous user. Delicious Audio reports the Golden Fleece is "based on a much-talked-about pedal used by Wilco's Nels Cline"².

Versions and the Au79 variant

There are two versions of the Golden Fleece. JHS Pedals notes "there are actually two versions of this floating around on Reverb, the original" and a newer pedal with updated graphics³. Delicious Audio reported in December 2018 that "the latest version is now in a smaller enclosure, but all the original tone is there, with more clarity, responsiveness and lower noise, all with lower output"².

There is also a separate lower-gain take on the same idea. Guitar Pedal X describes the Mythos Pedals Au79 Golden Fleece as "essentially Zach Broyles's lower gain take on his Golden Fleece," a mini one-knob pedal with "really elegant breakup texture," and notes it was "made specifically for the Mass Street Music Store - which is the only place you can acquire this from!"⁸

What reviewers said

Reviewers have praised how the pedal cleans up. As one reviewer put it: "It cleans up extremely well and can go from light and crunchy to full-on saturated awesomeness."⁴

On That Pedal Show, Dan and Mick demoed the Golden Fleece in 2017. Dan found it "works brilliantly well" for non-traditional, broken and scrunched-up overdrive sounds with ambience and reverb added, and Mick compared its character to the Hudson Broadcast, saying "it kind of sits in there with the Hudson broadcast a little bit," with similar clarity and a slightly fuzzy top-end breakup⁵.

That Pedal Show demoed the Golden Fleece alongside other fuzzes, with the pedal sent to the show by Mythos⁵:

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JHS Pedals has also singled the pedal out in its one-knob fuzz coverage, calling the Golden Fleece "a huge favorite of mine in the fuzz category"⁹.

Videos

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Questions