On Monday night I got to hang out with Ian and Dave of Down and Above. I made a couple of amps for them as Christmas presents and, well, between their schedules and my schedule, it took a while to come up with a mutually agreed upon time to hang out.
Here's Ian trying it out for the first time:
It was a lot of fun to hang out and get feedback on the Stella. Ian and Dave both really liked how it sounded at maximum volume levels. If you crank all the knobs, the Stella starts self-oscillating and sounding weird. But if you play a power chord through it, you get a super thick, fat fuzz. When you hold the sustain and let the chord naturally die out, the sound starts swelling and breaking up in a unique way that is hard to describe.
As a harmonica player, I don't crank it that high, since these kinds of volume levels lead to feedback problems. But for the guitar, it sounds awesome.
The nice thing is, the Stella doesn't start oscillating right away if you cut the note off, so you can get away with a little syncopation.
A little caveat: this is how it sounds if you power the Stella Amp with anything from 4.5-6 volts. At higher power supply levels, like 9 volts or so, it cuts out more instead of giving a nice sustained fuzz when playing it cranked. In the video above, the amp is running at 6 volts (4 AA batteries).