We try out a lot of different circuits at Catalinbread when looking for new ideas, always looking for that spark of something special. During one such prototyping session, one circuit really stood out. We’re talking about a rare and obscure circuit known as the Harmonic Percolator. “Wow! There’s something to be mined here!” This circuit has the amazing property of generating predominantly even-order harmonics – which creates an amazingly sweet and clear distortion. You may know of this circuit from its use by Steve Albini, who owns one particular unit that apparently has magical properties no other unit seems to have. We could search for holy grails and chase rainbows, but we saw a potential beyond one person’s use of it. Oddly enough, the ‘Percolator has a reputation for creating an ugly sound, albeit a cool and ugly sound. But we found something beautiful in it. So beautiful that you could play complex jazz chords through it and every note rings sweet and clear. So, using the original circuit as the springboard, we created the Karma Suture.