Strymon Canoga

Canoga is a simple pedal to use – there’s one knob for Drive and one for output Level – but the interaction between the guitar and Canoga’s input is critical, as is the interaction between it and your amp.

As with many fuzz pedals, Canoga works brilliantly plugged into an amp with a bit of hair on the tone already, similar to how Jimi Hendrix and other guitar greats of the 60s and 70s ran their rigs.

Additional versatility comes from the interaction between your guitar’s volume knob and the pedal’s input.

Traditionally, unbuffered fuzz pedals like to be connected directly to your guitar, so that the circuitry can “see” your guitar’s pickups and volume pot. Full up on both of Canoga’s pots and your guitar volume pot gets you the full fuzz experience, and rolling back the volume on the guitar opens up a new world of semi-clean blues, rock, Americana and pop sounds.

The rolled back sound stays clear in the high frequencies and doesn’t get muddy, so you might find that Canoga allows you to convincingly play riffs that you would normally employ a distortion pedal for, not a fuzz.