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Description
Description
The Fumble is a faithful production version of the other circuit I cloned for John: the Dumble BBC-1. Once the NOTADÜMBLË V1 was discontinued, customers started telling us how much they loved that circuit and how they wished it was sold separately. The Fumble is that exact circuit, now in its own compact enclosure with its own self-deprecating name, an $89 price point, and no kit to build.
Here is where the story gets stranger than fiction. While digging back through the original Dumble unit's history, we realized the BBC-1 isn't really a Dumble circuit at all. It's a JFET preamp lifted almost part for part from a Barcus Berry acoustic preamp made in the 1970s — the kind of small utility box that bridged piezo pickups into electric guitar amps in an era when nobody had a modern acoustic preamp. Howard cloned it. Put it in his own enclosure for a handful of local LA players. He then used the same JFET stage inside his amplifiers and called it the FET mode.
Which means the legendary Dumble FET sound — the one inside $200,000 to $400,000 amps — is a clone of a 1970s piezo preamp.
The Fumble is a clone of that clone of that clone. Three generations deep into one of the strangest chains of events in pedal history.
We've had the "Fumble" name and football helmet icon rolling around internally since April 10, 2012. It was originally going to be a Dumble style overdrive in our catalog, but the Moonshine took its place years ago. We never seriously revisited the Fumble project after then and the icon and rubber hand stamp went into a drawer for fourteen years. When all of this happened in 2025, the name was already there, waiting for the biggest fumble we had ever made as a company. Sometimes the universe hands you the punchline way in advance.
SPECS
- True bypass JFET clean boost
- Two controls : Input (bass and gain attenuator), Output (master volume) 9V DC center negative, 5mA
- Assembled in Kansas City
Description
Description
The Fumble is a faithful production version of the other circuit I cloned for John: the Dumble BBC-1. Once the NOTADÜMBLË V1 was discontinued, customers started telling us how much they loved that circuit and how they wished it was sold separately. The Fumble is that exact circuit, now in its own compact enclosure with its own self-deprecating name, an $89 price point, and no kit to build.
Here is where the story gets stranger than fiction. While digging back through the original Dumble unit's history, we realized the BBC-1 isn't really a Dumble circuit at all. It's a JFET preamp lifted almost part for part from a Barcus Berry acoustic preamp made in the 1970s — the kind of small utility box that bridged piezo pickups into electric guitar amps in an era when nobody had a modern acoustic preamp. Howard cloned it. Put it in his own enclosure for a handful of local LA players. He then used the same JFET stage inside his amplifiers and called it the FET mode.
Which means the legendary Dumble FET sound — the one inside $200,000 to $400,000 amps — is a clone of a 1970s piezo preamp.
The Fumble is a clone of that clone of that clone. Three generations deep into one of the strangest chains of events in pedal history.
We've had the "Fumble" name and football helmet icon rolling around internally since April 10, 2012. It was originally going to be a Dumble style overdrive in our catalog, but the Moonshine took its place years ago. We never seriously revisited the Fumble project after then and the icon and rubber hand stamp went into a drawer for fourteen years. When all of this happened in 2025, the name was already there, waiting for the biggest fumble we had ever made as a company. Sometimes the universe hands you the punchline way in advance.
SPECS
- True bypass JFET clean boost
- Two controls : Input (bass and gain attenuator), Output (master volume) 9V DC center negative, 5mA
- Assembled in Kansas City