Ruhrpott Guitars "Schubkraft" - Guitar Pedal Demo

Recorded with a Blackstar Studio 10 6L6 with clean-ish settings and an Epiphone Dot with our own Classic '59 Humbucker Pickups.

Schubkraft is based on a preamp from the Telefunken Echomixer from the 1960s. Similar to the Grampian 636 reverb, which was ‘abused’ magnificently by Pete Townsend, the reverb of the Echomixer is just an accessory for us guitarists. The behaviour of the preamp is interesting! It works with two germanium transistors as gain stages and therefore offers an (almost) clean boost with approx. 15 dB gain. That will make allmost any amp sweat, no matter how much headroom it has.

The operation is very simple – you turn up the ‘level’ until you are loud enough 🙂 The germanium transistors also start to saturate a little from around 3 o’clock, depending on the output of your pickups.
For an extra portion of thrust, there is also the Normal/HF switch. In the ‘Normal’ position, the low mids are boosted a little, while in the HF position, high mids are added to provide more transparency in the distortion.

The pedal works well with buffers (although it might be a little bit louder than usual), so you can add it either in front of your drive pedals or at the end of your effect chain to push the amp a little more. Or of course everywhere in between.

The pedal is completely handwired on the basis of a perforated strip circuit board. The transistors are selected for each pedal.

The controls are:

- Pegel – sets the overall preamp level. Unity is at about 12 o‘clock.
- HF/Normal – Changes between „normal“ behaviour and a slight high frequecy boost.
- Internal trim pot – the internal trim pot is set carefully to bias the Germanium transistors to sound their best. Changing it may result in bad sounds or even damaging the pedal!