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JHS Pedals is commemorating what firm founder Josh Scott has called “the biggest mistake of my career” by releasing the Fumble – an $89 boost based on an ultra-rare Dumble circuit.
The affordable standalone unit comes amidst overwhelming fan demand, after the clean boost circuit was mistakenly put in the V1 Notadümblë pedal last year.
As Scott explained at the time, the Notadümblë was meant to include the clean-boosting magic of John Mayer’s one-of-one A Box Later pedal, which was custom-built by the late Howard Dumble and later cloned by Scott.
Then, Scott realized he had made a huge mistake and, in a schematics mix-up, had actually used Mayer’s even-rarer preamp buffer, the Dumble BBC-1, instead.
Consequently, the Notadümblë was discontinued after the first batch – all of which contained the incorrect circuit – sold like hot cakes.
Moving forward, this is the only place the BBC-1 circuit will live, and the small, affordable pedal is as simple as it gets. With dials for its Input and Output, and true-bypass switching, the faithful recreation promises “enhanced clean tones.”
But while the Output is for your Master Volume, the Input isn’t actually a gain knob; it attenuates bass and input gain simultaneously at the front of the circuit. Rolling it off gives a thinner, tighter response. Doing the opposite makes it fuller and louder.
It can be used as a clean boost at the front of pedalboards, or to slam the front of overdrive pedals and dirty amps. Yet this pedal’s story has one more surprise up its sleeve.
While “digging through” the original unit’s history, JHS realized, “The BBC-1 isn’t really a Dumble circuit at all. It’s a JFET preamp lifted almost part-for-part from a Barcus Berry acoustic preamp made in the 1970s – the kind of small utility box that bridged piezo pickups into electric guitar amps in an era when nobody had a modern acoustic preamp.”
Howard Dumble had cloned the circuit and built a few pedals for LA-based players. JHS Pedals adds that “he then used the same JFET stage inside his amplifiers and called it the FET mode.
“Which means the legendary Dumble FET sound is a clone of a 1970s piezo preamp,” the company says.
So, the JHS Fumble is a clone of a clone of a clone, which once accidentally masqueraded as a different clone altogether. Anyone else's head hurting?
Scott has now revealed that the Notadümblë Mark II is on its way – presumably with the right Dumble inside it. But for those that want JHS’s Dumble BBC-1 recreation on its own, the Fumble is not to be, er, fumbled.
“I’m excited to commemorate my own failures,” says Scott.
Get one for just $89 from JHS.
Elsewhere, Scott has raised concerns that ChatGPT is erasing pedal history after an experiment with the AI platform.
