JHS Volture

JHS Volture is a small pedal which connects to an existing fuzz pedal and simulates the effect of an almost empty (and starving) 9 volts battery.

Since the fuzz effect was invented in the early sixties, guitar players have gone to great lengths to achieve the perfect fuzz tone. Legends say that Duane Allman placed his fuzz pedal in the freezer between sessions to cool down the transistors.

Fortunately there’s one trick that always works: use a dying battery. Inherently simple devices like fuzz circuits are extremely sensitive to the amount of voltage that they receive, thus any change in the voltage from your power supply will cause drastically different tones. Guitarists caught on to this hack and began draining their batteries to try and find the sweet spot for their fuzz pedal. A good idea in theory, but who has time for that?

Then, just a few years ago, a certain unnamed guitarist reached out to JHS for a practical solution for this technique – and the Volture was born. The Volture is a modern day device for your vintage fuzz circuitry. Simply place it in between your power supply and your pedal, and you can precisely trim the input voltage and perfectly replicate the tone of a dying battery.

Though developed specifically for vintage fuzz circuits, the Volture will work with any fully analogue pedal. In fact, you might be surprised by the trippy sounds you find lurking in your favorite overdrive or distortion.

JHS Volture demo video