Wampler Germanium Tumnus Deluxe vs. original silicon Tumnus Deluxe

00:00 interior photo and zero gain clips
00:30 gain at noon
00:46 gain at one-thirty
01:02 gain at four o'clock
01:19 Fourier transforms
Carefully controlled, brief, identical clips comparing the standard Wampler Tumnus Deluxe with the Germanium Tumnus Deluxe. A single loop was recorded to a Boss RC-1 looper using a Fender Telecaster (bridge pickup). The looper was then used to send the identical signal to a Fender Deluxe Reverb amp under nine different conditions of increasing gain. Pedal volumes were fixed at clean unity gain (as close as I could determine), and all EQ controls were set to 12:00. This is by no means a definitive comparison, but I found the results interesting--namely, the difference in tone is real, but small. I’ve included Fourier transforms of the clean tone and the most heavily distorted tone in order to reveal differences in the harmonic content. As expected, there is a significant increase in harmonics going from clean to distorted. Comparing the standard silicon Tumnus Deluxe to the germanium Tumnus Deluxe, the germanium pedal shows a decrease in certain frequencies in the 500 - 1000 Hz region. I interpret this to mean the standard Tumnus Deluxe has more midrange, but of course this is a very limited experiment and open to further interpretation/exploration. One difference that only becomes apparent when you play through the pedals is that the silicon version seems more brittle, while the germanium version is more “squishy” and smooth.

Edit: The right channel signal is shown in the Fourier transforms. This is only part of the story. I used an OX 1x12 cab model, with an R121 in the left channel, a U67 in the right channel, and a slight amount of room ambience in both channels. Fourier transforms of the left channel show abundant fundamental tones (E2, F2, B2, C3), about 5x more intense than in the right channel, due to the difference between the R121 and the U67. I omitted the left channel to make comparisons easier, but perhaps this was a mistake. In any case, the audio evidence speaks for itself. [Why do we get F2 and C3 in an E chord? That would require a scientific study. I suspect they result from many factors like pick attack, tuning, string tension and width, pickup type, modeling artefacts, etc.]