EFE TYGR 2 (Tiger) - Project X (10). The concept was to try and capture that odd little nugget of time that occurred at the end of the 1970s and the dawn of the 1980s. Where a number of companies struggled to move with the times, and you get this cool kinda cross over of ideas. The Eurotec and Bell Electrolabs ranges, for example. Innovative in many ways, but still a dinosaur in a space suit at the side of the wave of technology coming in from the East.

The basic circuit skeleton of the TYGR is that of a Big Muff Pi. But a Muff it is not. It's a back to the drawing board type affair rather than a hail to vintage wonders. The sole circuit influence of something that pre-exists was the Bell Electrolabs Fuzz, but not really for how it sounds, mainly biasing ideas for gain stage stacking. The general tone of the TYGR is large and very open sounding. It has a distinct growl to the lower registers with a highly interactive tone control giving usable flavours at all positions. I'd say it has some serious uniqueness amongst the ocean of Muff variants out there. I dropped much time into this design, and I'm pretty damn stoked with the outcome. ...and I totally didn't rip off a certain vintage synthesizer. Wahahaha...

Bonus nerd shit - When I'm saying I dropped much time on this, I'm referring to the design and the part's selection. The signal path is a mixture of Polypropylene, Mylar and Polyester. That shit is there for a reason. Ceramics - nope. The biasing is weird and weird for a reason. Q3 gets slammed with heavy voltage and delivers flavours previously unheard. Like in The Centurions when the dude does his thing and gets all that pimped out armour n shit, this is that. Bigger, stronger, faster, a precise calculator. It'll take your Civil War Muff, throw it over its knee and give it a damn good spanking. Ultra bonus: non static-y tone control sweep. Synth players revoice! Lastly, for those who need to know - BC549C's all the way. Thee absolute dog's bollocks for Muff circuits. Who knows? You, me and Pete Cornish. The end.

Pictured above: the original large box, TYGR. This was a limited run project of 50 pieces worldwide.