Browne Amplification The Fixer and The Carbon review

There’s an inexplicable joy in stumbling upon a boutique pedal builder that’s at the forefront of creating exceptional stompboxes. It’s as if you want to keep them all to yourself – until you find out there’s a small subset of players already using their impressive pedals. 

Browne Amplification, out of Kansas City, Missouri, has been one of the builders on my radar that has genuinely astonished me in terms of the build quality and tone of the pedals they produce. If you haven’t already tried their remarkable Protein Dual Overdrive, it’s one of those raved-about overdrive pedals that always ends up on backorder because it’s that good. 

Its popularity is mostly due to its stackable dual-drive circuit combination that’s inspired by a ’90s-era Marshall Bluesbreaker (blue side) and the Nobels ODR-1 (green side) – a dynamic overdrive duo that seemingly work gloriously together and separately. 

Recently, Browne Amplification released The Carbon (a standalone overdrive that extracts the “Blue” channel circuit of their Protein pedal) and The Fixer (a unique dual boost and buffer) as a pair of robust and gig-worthy stompboxes that address different needs, but if you ever have the chance to add either one onto your pedalboard, they may never come off.  

There are no internal or external switches to fiddle with; the Carbon’s custom-tweaked overdriven voice is achieved only by using controls for Volume, Tone and Gain. The pedal also features soft-switching and a blue LED, and it’s ruggedly handsome, with a mini-metal name badge attached to the powder blue coating of its metal housing.

The Fixer is an “always-on” pedal that aims to tackle the varying output when switching between guitars with different pickup complements by having two independent boost circuits with separate volumes, two status LEDs and an A/B soft-switch to toggle between the two boosts so you can add either more punch or match outputs.

There’s also a tuner out and mute switch so your tuner can stay active or hit mute for silent tuning or switching guitars. The Fixer also acts as a high-quality buffer that “fixes” impedance issues with larger signal chains and multiple pedals on your board.

The Fixer is more than just your garden-variety boost pedal. As a buffer, you can hear how much it adds restorative life and vigorous feel to your rig. And moreover, being able to balance output or inject more juicy oomph between different guitars makes this a must-have. If that’s not enough, it also works well as a discrete volume boost for its transparency and clarity.

Many players who love classic “Bluesbreaker” tones will undoubtedly embrace the Carbon, but I hate to break it to owners of the Protein – the Carbon sounds more organic as its own pedal. It’s still an outstanding circuit in either housing, but here, it blooms with more liveliness and presence and is bigger-sounding.

The Carbon’s brightly warm crunch is devastatingly amp-like, with a tight response when kept at a low-to-mid gain, and its straightforward controls make it so darn easy to find an enticingly focused and sweetly overdriven “base tone” like a jumped JTM Marshall. Either way, I suggest vaulting these stellar pedals at the top of your wish list. 

Specs

The Fixer

• PRICE: $/£149
• ORIGIN: USA
• TYPE: Dual boost/buffer pedal
• CONTROLS: A Volume, B Volume, A/B switch, Mute switch
• FEATURES: Silent switching, always on tuner out
• BYPASS: Buffered
• POWER: 9V DC

The Carbon

• PRICE: $/£219
• ORIGIN: USA
• TYPE: Overdrive pedal
• CONTROLS: Gain, Volume, Tone
• FEATURES: Based on the modded-Blues Breaker style drive of the 'blue' side of The Protein overdrive
• POWER: 9V DC
• CONTACT: Browne Amplification