Matching the Fuzz Face with a Fulltone '69: my experience

M

mtlin

Inspired
I spent the morning tweaking the Fuzz Face to match my Fulltone '69 pedal. Here are some notes:

My patch was Fuzz Face into Plexi 2 (bright switch off) into Rewirez 4x12 with vintage Greenbacks. I had the Fulltone '69 out front. (For those of you who know the '69, I had the volume on full, the bias fully clockwise, the countour fully counter clockwise and the fuzz all the way up. The manual says these settings are for the stock Fuzz Face circuit.) I was using a Strat with the volume knob of the guitar on about 8.

General observations: The Fuzzface in tha Axe-FX has way, way, WAY more gain on tap than the '69. With the drive on 5 it was giving up much more overdrive than the '69 is capable of. The Axe FF is also richer, smoother, and fatter near its default settings. Most of my tweaking was done with an eye toward making it thinner, brighter and cleaner. The thing that surprised me most was how low I had to set the drive control to get into the ballpark. The next most surprising thing was how much low cut I ended up applying.

Here are the settings that got me very close:

Drive: 2.6
Tone: 5.79
Low Cut: 357 Hz
High Cut: 5042 Hz
Slew Limit; 0.00 (I didn't play with this one so, for all I know, it's the secret to nailing it. :D )
Bias: .71 (This one is important for getting the character of the distortion right.)
Bass: 0 db
Mid Freq: 638.2
Mid: 0 db
Treb: 1.9 db
Level: 8.15

For me, these settings got very close. The Axe's FF is also a lot quieter than the pedal.

I'd love to hear about other people's experiences with tweaking the FF!
 
Re: Matching the Fuzz Face with a Fulltone '69: my experienc

Thanks for sharing your experience!

I look forward to giving your settings a try.
 
Re: Matching the Fuzz Face with a Fulltone '69: my experienc

I have also tweaked the FF model, using my FoxRox Hot Silicon as reference, which probably has more gain compared to the germanium pedals. I can get the distorted sound pretty close, though it doesn't respond to guitar volume like the real pedal does. On a whim I added the envelope modifier to the Drive Block's Mix control, and while it's not perfect it does help simulate this.

To me, running a real FF pedal into a crunchy Marshall, rolling the guitar volume back a bit yields a tone that sounds more like a slight overdrive - almost cleaner than the amp alone. I can go from a "Little Wing" tone to "Foxy Lady" with just the guitar volume.
 
Re: Matching the Fuzz Face with a Fulltone '69: my experienc

mtlin, thanks!
 
Re: Matching the Fuzz Face with a Fulltone '69: my experienc

Cool mtlin ! :mrgreen:

I had the same experience with the gain of the Axe Fuzz Face, I had to lower the gain really a lot to go into the Fuzz Face territory... near 1 or 2 from memory.

Thanks for sharing that... I will try it tonight... ;)
 
Re: Matching the Fuzz Face with a Fulltone '69: my experienc

Same experience here. I had to lower the gain to 1-2 and raise the low cut quite a bit. I'll definately check your settings out to see how they compare to mine. I didn't have a pedal to A/B against, so I was just working from memory. I couldn't decide where I liked the bias. I played with it a lot but I haven't decided on a favorite value yet.

D
 
Re: Matching the Fuzz Face with a Fulltone '69: my experienc

mtlin said:
Here are the settings that got me very close:

Drive: 2.6
Tone: 5.79
Low Cut: 357 Hz
High Cut: 5042 Hz
Slew Limit; 0.00 (I didn't play with this one so, for all I know, it's the secret to nailing it. :D )
Bias: .71 (This one is important for getting the character of the distortion right.)
Bass: 0 db
Mid Freq: 638.2
Mid: 0 db
Treb: 1.9 db
Level: 8.15

I'd love to hear about other people's experiences with tweaking the FF!
Click to expand...

I tested your settings and liked the distortion characteristics alot :) . I use it to get from a fender clean to a marshall crunch sound for power chords.

But I found it to be too thin. The obvious way to correct that would be to lower the lowcut. But to my ears it appeared more pleasing to raise bass to 2.7 and mid to 6 at 219hz.

Thanks mtlin for sharing :D
 
Re: Matching the Fuzz Face with a Fulltone '69: my experienc

Cool! I'm going to check out your bass and mid settings. The '69 pedal is quite thin into a clean amp. Into a the Plexi 2 model with the master up and the volume at about 5 and bright cap off, it sounds just right to me. But I can see wanting an even fatter sound.

DieSchmalle said:
mtlin said:
Here are the settings that got me very close:

Drive: 2.6
Tone: 5.79
Low Cut: 357 Hz
High Cut: 5042 Hz
Slew Limit; 0.00 (I didn't play with this one so, for all I know, it's the secret to nailing it. :D )
Bias: .71 (This one is important for getting the character of the distortion right.)
Bass: 0 db
Mid Freq: 638.2
Mid: 0 db
Treb: 1.9 db
Level: 8.15

I'd love to hear about other people's experiences with tweaking the FF!
Click to expand...

I tested your settings and liked the distortion characteristics alot :) . I use it to get from a fender clean to a marshall crunch sound for power chords.

But I found it to be too thin. The obvious way to correct that would be to lower the lowcut. But to my ears it appeared more pleasing to raise bass to 2.7 and mid to 6 at 219hz.

Thanks mtlin for sharing :D
Click to expand...
 
Re: Matching the Fuzz Face with a Fulltone '69: my experienc

mtlin said:
Here are the settings that got me very close:

Drive: 2.6
Tone: 5.79
Low Cut: 357 Hz
High Cut: 5042 Hz
Slew Limit; 0.00 (I didn't play with this one so, for all I know, it's the secret to nailing it. :D )
Bias: .71 (This one is important for getting the character of the distortion right.)
Bass: 0 db
Mid Freq: 638.2
Mid: 0 db
Treb: 1.9 db
Level: 8.15

For me, these settings got very close. The Axe's FF is also a lot quieter than the pedal.

I'd love to hear about other people's experiences with tweaking the FF!
Click to expand...

wonderful!
I looove posts like this.
thanks!
 
Re: Matching the Fuzz Face with a Fulltone '69: my experienc

mtlin said:
Drive: 2.6
Tone: 5.79
Low Cut: 357 Hz
High Cut: 5042 Hz
Slew Limit; 0.00 (I didn't play with this one so, for all I know, it's the secret to nailing it. :D )
Bias: .71 (This one is important for getting the character of the distortion right.)
Bass: 0 db
Mid Freq: 638.2
Mid: 0 db
Treb: 1.9 db
Level: 8.15
Click to expand...

keep everything as it is and switch to OCTV DIST, instant Prescription Electronics Experience sound, at least the way I remember it. (it's been a few years) :mrgreen:
 
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