JHS Pedals Fumble JFET Clean Boost

Two-knob pedals aren’t all that common these days, but when you get one like today’s rust-colored beauty, you kinda wish there were more of them out in the wild. The Fumble JFET Clean Boost from our friends at JHS Pedals has huge range for such a small pedal, moving from simple signal boost to amp-pushing to preamp glory to lead solo sparkle, and everything in between. Coming from the family of Dumble circuits, this one gives you tons of tone, without taking up tons of pedalboard real estate…

The Fumble is a faithful production version of another circuit Josh cloned for John Mayer: the Dumble BBC-1. The Fumble has two knobs, true bypass switching, and creates a particularly enhanced clean tone. OUTPUT is your master volume. Turn it up for more volume. INPUT is the one that surprises people. It is not a standard gain knob. It attenuates bass and input gain at the front of the circuit simultaneously. Fully right has no cut — consider it a bypass of the control. As you turn the knob to the left, bass and gain are gradually attenuated. Roll it down for a thinner, tighter response. Roll it up for a fuller, louder one. There is almost nothing else on the market that boosts in this way.

Use the Fumble four ways :

1. As a permanent buffer and clean boost at the front of your board. Set the output low, dial the input to taste. It tightens up everything downstream and gives you a sweetener you stop noticing because you never want to turn it off.
2. To slam the front of your overdrives. This is the secret most players miss. We default to stacking gain after gain after gain. Putting a clean JFET boost like this before a Timmy, a King of Tone, a Klon, or a Morning Glory — that’s often the better second stage you’ve been hunting for but just didn’t know it.
3. To slam the front of a dirty amp. Tweed, Plexi, anything broken up. The Fumble makes it bigger and more articulate. Roll the input back for a tighter, treble forward attack into a cranked amp.
4. As a solo boost at the end of the chain. Crank the output, set the input where it feels best, hit it for the chorus or the solo. Done.

In our demo, I run through many different ways to use The Fumble – clean, slightly dirty, pushing an overdrive, pushing a preamp and more. This is one of those special pedals that just *sounds perfect* when you first turn it on, and you can tell it will be a keeper. Thanks to JHS Pedals once again for sending this one my way – be sure to get over to their website for the full story, and grab a Fumble from Sweetwater if you want to add it to your pedal pile – cheers!!