Sagacious

SI Fuzz with Voltage Sag Readout

The story of The Sagacious pedal is twisty and strange. Its original concept was for a “nothing” pedal, much like the viral meme that goes around the guitar groups every few months. If you haven’t seen it, it’s a photo of a white Boss-style enclosure called the “Nothingizer” that has no internal circuitry - it just connects the input and output jack directly. We didn’t want to make a pedal that literally doesn’t do anything, so we tried to fill a niche by creating a pedal a la Leland Sklar, a legendary session bassist who installed a fake “nothing” switch on his bass for tricking audio engineers in the studio. 

Perhaps you have an overbearing bandmate who is always picking at your tone and making micro-adjustments. We wanted to make a pedal that looked legitimate and had some flashy (highly visible!) bells and whistles, but ultimately did very little to change your tone. A secret weapon to get that annoying bandmate off your back, if you will. In the end, we felt that producing any pedal that didn’t deliver awesome tone and versatility was disingenuous, so we arrived at our current rendition: an ultra-sleek fuzz box with the added benefit of highly-visible trickery via its readout panel.

The Sagacious is a raunchy, biting fuzz that sounds fantastic in many genres. It holds its own on guitar and bass, and it cuts through a mix beautifully. The left knob controls volume (be careful, there’s a lot on tap!) and the right knob controls gain. The red knob towards the bottom is truly special: this controls voltage sag and is directly tied to the LED numerical readout. Adjusting the voltage will alter the character of the fuzz. At lower volts, it simulates a dying battery on a vintage fuzz circuit and creates splatty, spluttery (dare we say velcro?) tones. Try turning down the gain and maxing out the sag for some cool tones!

Careful attention was made (and many hairs were pulled out) during the design of the sag circuit - it behaves like a true, proper voltage drop by using a voltage regulator and extra power filtering. No need to worry about burning up potentiometer traces or killing the circuit with sub-optimal voltage - the sag feature is stable and sounds amazing! Plus, what’s not to love about that bright LED display? Impress your bandmates with its accurate voltage readout, and if your other guitarist is picking at your tone, just bump that sag knob a bit. Will the circuit really care if the voltage drops a couple tenths? Probably not. But your bandmate will see the adjustment and be satisfied!

We’re big fans of cool, unique words at Songbirds Effects. “Sagacious” is defined as being shrewd, having keen mental discernment, and good judgement. We know that you have these traits when you pick up a Sagacious pedal!