NPD: MASF Lavender Head

[Concretebadger]

In the end, the budget and luggage allowance for my epic Japanese adventure didn't quite stretch to picking up a CIJ jag, but I saw some amazing places and plan to go back sometime soon. Maybe next time. Osaka was one of my faves though, and they have a branch of Ishibashi near the Umeda Sky Building, so I went and spent some of my holiday money there. So yeah. The Lavender Head.

It sounds very muff-like, closer in sound to my IC version rather than a ram's head or other 'early' transistor types. It's very scooped, has a saturated thickness and isn't very transparent but can do palm mutes, so it's a bit like how I wish the US reissues were. You *could* do some Gilmourish riffs with it, but I think it's aimed more at shoegaze and noise rock. There's tons of sustain - the gain goes from the usual Muff 'minimum' amount to 'enough for almost all situations'. The 'filter' control is interesting, because it doesn't work like the standard Muff tone knob: not much changes before noon, but it goes more nasal past the two o clock position, and there's a bit of bass still present even when it's right over at the trebliest setting. It's certainly unusual and I'm still in the honeymoon period, but for all the high gaininess it's very usable and musical. Again, it's how I wish the US reissues were.

Here's the really weird thing, which might be of interest to the likes of Mike or Timhulio since they're familiar with building Muff circuits: I don't even think this even is a Muff circuit! I'm counting nearly twenty resistors and thirteen caps, but there are only three trannies (C1815s, I think) and I can't see any clipping diode pairs unless they're tucked away somewhere (the wiring and soldering are very neat). It still sounds like a hot-rodded muff to me and the important thing is, it sounds really damn cool!