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I picked up an EQD Sound Shank today (Seems like a pretty old one too! #068), and I was reading up on where to put a germanium fuzz in your signal chain. I understand they don't like having buffered pedals in front of them and are best first, but would having a Styrmon OB1 and/or Korg Pitchblack in front of it (at least just the Strymon comp, which I leave on all the time) be an issue? Both are true bypass.

I have two germanium fuzzes on my board and they are in the middle of my chain before and after buffers. All depends on the circuit though, and if you like the way it sounds. Just gotta try it...

I just wanna make sure I'm not frying anything, haha. That's probably only a power supply issue though.

No worries we on frying it based on chain order. Those older Sound Shanks do need to be on their own isolated power supplies though, no daisy chaining.

Are they centre positive too? Or am I making that up

tomlane95 wrote:Are they centre positive too? Or am I making that up

Nope, mosts are center negative. IIRC It's the positive ground circuit that's confusing you, which is the reason they require an isolated power supply.

PumpkinPieces wrote:I have two germanium fuzzes on my board and they are in the middle of my chain before and after buffers. All depends on the circuit though, and if you like the way it sounds. Just gotta try it...

This.
If the circuit relies on loading the pickups on the input (~1K or 2K pot for Q1) it demands to be first (Fuzz Face, 1.5 Tone Benders)
I have a v1 Fuzzrite whose Q1 is 500K and it works great after wah, vibe, delay etc...but not after the phase-O-matic deluxe...whereas stacking Fuzzrite into p-O-m is one of my favorite pedal pairings within my current setup.
Another dirt mainstay of mine is the Harmonic Percolator (a hybrid Ge/Si) which uses 100k on the input and 50k on the output. Works great before or after most pedals...yet it too doesn't like following the tube phaser. It gets far too noisy and doesn't seem to properly...track...for lack of a better word. But behind the Deja Vibe? Another favorite pairing

In general I've found that most fuzz prefers to interact directly with your guitar's pickups, unobstructed. It typically provides a superior level of touch sensitivity and greater dynamic control, even more fuzziness & clarity. Trial & error is the path to discovering what one prefers and works best for individual needs/playing style.