Fjord Fuzz Berserk III

The Berserkers were a particularly rowdy bunch of vikings known for wearing bear skin clothing and charging up on amanita muscaria before pillaging around the world. The consumption of amanita is disputed by historians, but we do know that both humans and livestock had access to the much more peaceful and friendly Psilocybe Semilanceata, so in the spirit of Tarantinesque revisionism, BERSERK III drapes itself in much more peaceful and psychedelic symbolism for your enjoyment. BERSERK III expands on the circuit family tree that started with the octave section of ODIN. That same circuit can be configured in four different, equally useful and exciting ways.

There’s a loud and strong octave fuzz, a precise and pointy octave fuzz, a wide and kind regular fuzz and a bright and loud regular fuzz. For ODIN II and now III, I used the loud octave fuzz and the kind regular fuzz, for a very fun 1-2-punch kind of live package. The regular fuzz lets you fall back into the mix and the octave fuzz allows you to punch through anything when needed. Some people found this combination to be a little bit unbalanced, and they’re right. That was the point. BERSERK III uses the other two versions of this circuit. When engaged you are welcomed by a loud, bright and vintage-sounding fuzztone, first found on the BERSERK II. It has perfect string-to-string separation and very even dynamic response across the fretboard. It’s a bit noisier and more raw compared to the regular fuzz found in ODIN. Toggle BERSERK III into octave mode and you’ll find a near perfect octave doubling. Pointy, crisp, clear and chalky. ODIN’s octave up is much more powerful in terms of gain structure, which in turn causes stronger octave down differential notes, but it will never match BERSERK’s octaves for clarity and precision. You can’t have both in the same circuit, but with BERSERK III, now you can at least have both on your pedal board!

Only feed it 9VDC centre tip negative and expect it to draw about 250mA of current worst case scenario.