JHS Pollinator Germanium 3 Knob Fuzz

Music would not be what it is today without a Fuzz Face at the feet of legendary players like Jimi Hendrix, Duane Allman, and countless others. The Pollinator V2 follows in the footsteps of this legendary circuit, but takes its abilities to new levels. At its heart are hand matched AC128 Germanium transistors that add a mojo and flavor that is instantly recognizable. Let’s see what the Pollinator has to offer for any genre that you can throw at it.

Looking at the controls, you will see Volume, Gain, Fuzz, and Bias. The Volume control is a standard master output control. Turn it to the right and you are louder, turn it to the left and you are quieter. Compared to a standard Fuzz Face this control has around 5x more power, and compared to the Pollinator V1 it is 2x louder. This amount of available headroom allows you to use the Pollinator as a powerful boost to hit your tube amp or slam another overdrive with ease. The Gain control is new to V2 and should be seen as a pre-gain control that works and interacts with the Fuzz control. The Fuzz control adjusts the overall amount of distortion/fuzz created by the circuit. The Gain adjusts the overall amount of gain that is allowed into the Fuzz control. The interaction between these two controls offers a massive array of tones from boost, overdrive, tube crunch, vintage fuzz or gated and destroyed distortion. The last control is the Bias knob. This control varies the direct voltage to the second stage transistor. In laymens terms, the less voltage this transistor sees, the dirtier, thinner, and harsher it gets. The more voltage it sees, the bigger, cleaner and more powerful it becomes. This control also compensates for temperature and variance in the germanium parts.