“We were able to up the gain and the volume on tap way past the levels we would normally get”: ThorpyFX’s Hanami fuzz pedal is packing NOS germanium, dynamic, and blooming lovely

ThorpyFX has unveiled some high-end fuzz pedal action for your pedalboard, a germanium fuzz named the Hanami, and while it eschews the traditionally militaristic nomenclature of Adrian Thorpe’s fuzz designs don’t underestimate its destructive power when you plonk it on your pedalboard and plug it in.

Think of this as the fuzz box that sits somewhere between ThorpyFX’s Tone Bender-inspired Boneyard and Big Muff-inspired Fallout Cloud, offering the best of both worlds. Thorpe says the design was completed two years ago – they even shot a video with it – but he just wasn’t happy with the name.

In a time when the world is in pretty bad shape, better to go with Hanami, decorate the enclosure with cherry blossoms, and celebrate Japanese culture.

Hanami is a four-knob fuzz with controls for Level, Boost, Treble and Bass, and having a pair of dials to handle the EQ – each interactive with the other and capable of boosting and cutting frequencies to taste – is one of the reasons why this should be a versatile fuzz option capable of handling a number of different styles.

ThorpyFX Hanami Fuzz - YouTube

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Under the hood you’ve got a quartet of NOS germanium transistors and one NOS germanium diode.

“We designed Hanami to extract the most performance of these incredible Newmarket transistors we are proud to have been able to source,” says ThorpyFX. “They are low noise, consistent and sound fantastic and as such we were able to up the gain and the volume on tap way past the levels we would normally get from a quartet of germanium.”

You’ve also got a transformer isolated input that frees you up to place the pedal after a buffered pedal, which is always a handy option to have. Typically fuzzes get all confused and grumpy when placed anywhere other than first in your signal chain – their low impedance does not play well with buffers.

Thorpy FX Hanami Fuzz - YouTube

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ThorpyFX says you’ll get unity gain at around 10 o’clock on the Volume dial, which presumably offers plenty of room for hitting the front end of your guitar amp hard. Boost is the knob to turn when dialling in how much saturation you want.

As ever, these ThorpyFX builds are typically rock solid (didn’t they try to destroy one in a controlled explosion for a video segment, and it was unscathed?). Jacks are mounted on the top of the unit. Run it on 9V DC from a pedalboard power supply.

You can order it with a custom “blossom” print Barefoot Button for the footswitch or without. It’s priced £329 and available now, and judging by the demo videos is sounds very nice indeed. See ThorpyFX for more detail.