CAPTAIN OBVIOUS
SEPT ‘26
CAPTAIN OBVIOUS
GELRMANIUM OVERDRIVE
Captain Obvious is a clone of the EHX Germanium Overdrive, which discontinued production in 2024. It’s a very interesting overdrive with no volume control, just GAIN. The VOLTS and BIAS texture the tone by starving the voltage and misbiasing Q1. There are some settings that you will get a very gated output, this is a feature, not a flaw.
Josh Scott has a video you can find on YouTube explaining the origins of this pedal if you’d like more info: it was born as a germanium transistor tester.
The production units of the pedal used an NKT275 germanium transistor but on the Captain Obvious PCB Q1 is replaced with a GT308V / ΓT308B footprint because it’s a little more common and cheaper. The pinout for GT308V is BCE so if you’d like to use a different PNP Ge transistor check the pinout and you may need to bend the legs to CBE (use a little peice of wire wrapping that you stripped to insulate the legs). It’s also a good idea to socket Q1. Get yourself a cheap transistor tester if you don’t have one. Don’t trust images or datasheets you find online to always be correct, verify it yourself. Q2,Q3 can be 2N3906.
