JHS Pedals has introduced The Fumble, a compact JFET clean boost that packages one of the company’s most sought-after circuit designs into a straightforward two-knob pedal.
Get JHS’ The Fumble: Sweetwater | Guitar Center | Musician’s Friend
While it may appear to be a simple clean boost on the surface, The Fumble is based on the clean channel circuit found in the JHS NOTADÜMBLË V1, itself inspired by a lineage of highly coveted amplifier designs that can trace their roots back to a 1970s acoustic preamp.
According to JHS, The Fumble recreates the exact clean section of the NOTADÜMBLË V1 preamp, delivering the dynamic response and tonal character associated with some of the most desirable boutique amplifier circuits ever produced: “The JHS Fumble is the Dumble BBC-1 JFET clean boost — the circuit that accidentally ended up in the NOTADÜMBLË V1,” wrote JHS.
“If you bought V1 and loved the clean section, this is what was actually inside it. It’s a clone of the BBC-1 Howard Dumble built, which was itself a clone of a 1970s Barcus Berry acoustic preamp, which lives inside some of the most expensive amplifiers ever built. Use it as an always-on buffer, a front-end sweetener before your overdrives, or to slam the front of a dirty amp.”
Rather than offering multiple gain stages, switches, or EQ controls, JHS has opted for a minimalist layout centered around two controls: Input and Output. The Output knob functions as a master volume control, while the Input control adjusts both gain and low-end response at the front end of the circuit. This allows players to move from full-range clean boosts to tighter, more focused tones with a single adjustment.
Although The Fumble is marketed as a clean boost, its flexible gain structure makes it suitable for several applications throughout a signal chain.
Placed at the front of a pedalboard, it can function as a buffer-like tone shaper, helping tighten and strengthen the signal before it reaches other effects. It can also be used to push overdrive pedals harder, effectively creating an additional gain stage without significantly altering the core character of the existing drive sound.
Like the rest of the company’s lineup, The Fumble is hand-assembled and tested by JHS Pedals in Kansas City, Missouri. Get The Fumble at the links below for $89:
