Strymon Canoga Vintage Silicon Fuzz

It’s always a treat when the crew at Strymon release a new device, ’cause you really never know what you’re gonna get. Following in the footsteps of the recent Fairfax Class A Output Stage Drive, we’re looking at the brand new Canoga Vintage Silicon Fuzz today. The next pedal in the ‘Series A’ lineup, this 2-knob gem gets back to basics, with a wide array of analog dirt tones on tap, to push your core rig sound to the limits…and beyond.

Strymon is pleased to announce the arrival of Canoga, a tweaked version of a vintage silicon FuzzFace® based upon one of Gregg’s original three fuzz designs. Full up it works as a fuzz or distortion, but if you back the guitar’s volume down, there’s a world of varied tones on tap for all different styles of music. Canoga is a simple pedal to use – there’s one knob for Drive and one for output Level – but the interaction between the guitar and Canoga’s input is critical, as is the interaction between it and your amp. As with many fuzz pedals, Canoga works brilliantly plugged into an amp with a bit of hair on the tone already, similar to how Jimi Hendrix and other guitar greats of the 60s and 70s ran their rigs.

Additional versatility comes from the interaction between your guitar’s volume knob and the pedal’s input. Traditionally, unbuffered fuzz pedals like to be connected directly to your guitar, so that the circuitry can “see” your guitar’s pickups and volume pot. Full up on both of Canoga’s pots and your guitar volume pot gets you the full fuzz experience, and rolling back the volume on the guitar opens up a new world of semi-clean blues, rock, Americana and pop sounds. The rolled back sound stays clear in the high frequencies and doesn’t get muddy, so you might find that Canoga allows you to convincingly play riffs that you would normally employ a distortion pedal for, not a fuzz.

Killer code only sounds killer when it’s hosted inside of an ideal analog environment, and even though Strymon is primarily known for their DSP prowess, their stuff wouldn’t sound the way that it does without our strong analog team. The analog guys are always coming up with interesting designs, so Strymon launched the ‘Series A’ line of pure analog pedals to give them an outlet, and Canoga joins Fairfax as the second pedal in the series.

I’ve loved every Strymon pedal I’ve ever played, and while I appreciate the complexity and options on some of their more in-depth creations, it’s nice to have a simpler plug-and-play device in my hands, which is exactly what the Canoga Vintage Silicon Fuzz is. No huge manual, no overthinking or tap-dancing to be had – just an excellent-sounding pedal with lots of range and incredible tone. What more could you ask for? There’s more info over on the Strymon website, of course, and dont’ forget to head to YouTube for our demo as well – cheers!!