Fractal Audio DRIVE models: Face Fuzz (based on Dallas-Arbiter Fuzz Face)

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Face Fuzz (based on: Dallas-Arbiter Fuzz Face)

Fuzz was one of the first “transistorized” guitar effects. Transistors amplify the signal and when they clip, distortion is generated. When the clipping is hard instead of gradual, the distortion is harsh and buzzy, named “fuzz”. The tone of fuzz depends greatly on the type of transistor used: germanium, silicon etc. (available as Clip Types in the Drive block). Common opinion is that germanium transistors sound warmer/rounder, while silicon ones have more gain and are harsher.

If you want to read more about the origin of fuzz and guitar effects in general, I recommend Analog Man’s Guide to Vintage Effects, written by Tom Hughes (For Musicians Only), a joy to read.​

The USA-made Maestro (Fractal Audio’s “Master” Drive model) was the first fuzz pedal. It became famous after being used in Satisfaction by The Rolling Stones.

Back then the idea behind fuzz boxes was not only to approach the sound of a cranked amp (many vintage non-master amps sound like a fuzz when cranked: try the Brit JM45 model with Drive at 10), but also to emulate instruments like violin, cello and organ. While the latter is open to discussion, fuzz pedals never disappeared.

In real life fuzz pedals can pose players for challenges:
  • Germanium transistors are unreliable. The later silicon ones are more consistent but many players prefer the sound of germanium.
  • Many fuzzes rely heavily on a direct connection to the guitar’s pickups. Put a buffered pedal or a Wah inbetween and you’ll often lose your beloved fuzz tone.
  • Guitar pickups and the guitar’s volume also matter. Which is the beauty of fuzz.
This is important to us too:

Cliff:
"The Fuzz in the Axe-Fx reacts as though there is a buffer in front of it (because there is). It's a limitation inherent to all modeling products. I modeled it using a nominal source resistance. I forget what I used for the source resistance but it was probably around 100K ohms. To really simulate it you would need a controller to simulate the changing output impedance of the guitar.”

In this series we already covered the Bender Fuzz model, based on the Tone Bender from the 60s, made by Macari’s/Sola Sound (UK).

Dallas-Arbiter’s original Fuzz Face (1966, UK) is based on the Tone Bender MK1.5 with its two transistors. The Fuzz Face with its remarkable round “smiley face” shape is perhaps the most famous of all fuzz boxes because of one particular owner: Jimi Hendrix. He used germanium as well as silicon Fuzz Faces. Other famous users include David Gilmour, SRV and Eric Johnson. It also was one of the very first true bypass pedals.

Wikipedia:
"Arbiter Electronics Ltd. first issued the Fuzz Face in 1966. Later units bear the "Dallas Arbiter", "Dallas Music Industries Ltd.", "CBS/Arbiter Ltd." or "Dunlop Manufacturing Inc." name. The earliest units used germanium transistors. Silicon transistors were used in later editions of the pedal. Silicon transistors provided for a more stable operation, but have a different, harsher sound. The electronics are contained in a circular-shaped metal housing. Ivor Arbiter "got the idea for the round shape when he one day saw a microphone stand with a cast iron base". The pedal uses two knobs, one for volume, and one for the amount of "fuzz" the pedal produces. The arrangement of controls and logo on the box suggests a smiling face. The circuit is based on the shunt-series-feedback amplifier topology - a standard in engineering text books. Sola Sound and Vox had been using the same circuit topology for some of their Tone Bender pedals earlier in 1966. Dallas Music Industries made a final run of Fuzz Faces in 1976 or 1977, shortly after they had moved to the United States. The company bought Crest Audio in the 1980s and although it was operating under that name when it reissued the Fuzz Face in the 1986, the units bore the Dallas-Arbiter name. They made about 2000 Fuzz Faces until 1990. In 1993 Dunlop Manufacturing took over production, making a variety of Fuzz Faces to this day. Several germanium and silicon models are available.”

Dunlop owns the rights to the Fuzz Face name and produces many different versions of the Fuzz Face, including signature editions.

Fractal Audio’s current Face Fuzz model is based on Dallas-Arbiter’s Fuzz Face with germanium transistors. You can easily switch it to silicon, by adjusting the Clip Type parameter.

The Fuzz Face is an extremely simple pedal with just two knobs:
  • Fuzz: sets the amount of fuzz (model: Drive control).
  • Volume: controls the output level (model: Level control).
Compared to the Bender Fuzz, the Face Fuzz model has lots more bass and is more over the top. If you want to tame the bass, turn down Bass or increase Low Cut in the model (but it won't be authentic anymore).

With Fuzz set at max, the pedal will start to sound like a ring modulator. Many players just crank the Fuzz knob, set Volume and then use the guitar’s volume knob to get the desired amount of fuzz. This way even clean sounds are achievable, especially with the germanium Fuzz Face; check out the “Fuzz Face Tips” video below by James Santiago (Voodoo Lab, Dunlop, UAD). This approach works for the model too.

Article in Vintage Gear
Article in Tone Report

Of course the Drive block allows us to adjust far more things. Slew, Mix and other parameters are available. Bias is a lot of fun to experiment with when using a fuzz. But that's beyond the scope of this thread (see manual and wiki).

Personal note
Many of my presets have a two Drive blocks. One of them is set to Bender and to Face Fuzz (X/Y). The models are quite similar. I prefer the Bender model for chordal work on top of a clean or dirty Fender-ish amp model, and select the Face Fuzz model for single note leads.

About CPU:
  • Fractal Audio's Drive models take up varying amounts of CPU. The Face Fuzz is a heavy CPU user.
  • When a Drive block is engaged, CPU percentage will rise during playing, because CPU usage is "amplitude dependent".












Link to the list of published threads
 
Last edited:
Thanks very much, Yek - these Thread are as important as the Amps-Thread.

It always sounded like "damaged" to me, when I used a Fuzz Face in the Axe. Mayby I´m to youny for this.....

I´ve read in a german Guitarmagazin, that Pete Townsend played his Marshallstacks very "clean" an made the distortion with a Fuzz Face?
 
Yes, I came across his name as a FF user too, indeed.

But wasn't he primarily a Hiwatt endorser?
 
Bravo, this is so excellent Yek! I can't add a thing. I confess to using some assorted real life fuzz pedals in front of the AXE FX from time to time in pursuit of certain tones. It's something I've see Dweezil do extensively. No drive block frees up CPU for other tasks and allows that "guitar pickup/volume control/no buffer" thing to get certain sounds that (and James Santiago) you covered well. That said, I have no issue with the AXE FX PI Big Muff Fuzz drive block -- that with a Hiwatt in particular is pretty spectacular when dialed in right.
 
Alright, so I just got me a fuzz face yesterday. As in a real one. Getting one of those pedals to scream is not simple! So I'm going to share what I figured out and maybe that can help people figure out how to handle one in the AFX? I'm not an expert with the thing, but these experiments gave me a good starting point so maybe they can help somebody else get a good starting point too.

FIRST EXPERIMENTS:
The location of your Fuzz Face in your signal chain does make a big difference. When I had it in my True Bypass looper, it sounded different compared to plugging it straight into the front of the AFX. It hated having any buffered pedal in front of it, but there was even a slight change when it was in the bypass looper. Not sure how big of a deal this will make in an AFX, but it's something to consider.

(As an aside, how I powered the pedal ALSO changed the sound. Plugged into the power supply vs. using a battery gave different tones. I don't think this can be replicated in the AFX, but yes, the pedal is that sensitive).

Note: When I say "sounded different" I don't mean: "Oh wow, like this it has more bass!" I mean sounded different as in: "Okay...that's...a different sound entirely". We aint talking subtle here.

AMP SETTINGS:
This is one of those pedals which will work with some amps, but despise others. It will punish you for using the wrong amp. What I found worked great with the pedal is a pushed Marshall sorta sound.

Also, don't approach this pedal like you would a Muff or other fuzzes. I wouldn't use the Fuzz Face to be 100% responsible for my distorted tone like you would a Muff. Instead I used it kinda like an overdrive that made a fuzzy noise. I got the amp clipping (a bit) then used the Fuzz Face to push it into delicious, creamy but rude overdrive.

LEVEL vs FUZZ:
Okay, first of all, I wouldn't mess with the B\M\T until you have this pedal screaming. Reason being, the real pedal doesn't have those controls so you should probably get the pedal kicking ass before messing with extra stuff. Let's focus on Level\Fuzz because there be interesting things that happen here.

The level on my FF is LOUD. You can use it to push an amp really damn hard with the level control by itself. So you know how you got the amp clipping a bit? Use the level control to push it into proper OD. Push the level up really high as this will compensate for something else later on. Then you use the Fuzz control to bring in how much snarl you want. I kinda am approaching it more as a "Drive" and "Fuzz" control rather than a Volume\Drive control.

One of the secrets to the Fuzz Face seems to be finding the right balance between amp clipping, pushing that over the edge with the level control and then getting the right amount of fuzz so that it doesn't struggle, or fart out. Balancing the amp drive, level and fuzz is gonna be the trick to get this in the right area for your fuzz to sound right.

POSSIBLY MOST IMPORTANT: YOUR GUITAR VOLUME CONTROL.
Now I'm not an electronics guy so the following sentence may be absolute bullshit in terms of reality. HOWEVER, the input of a Fuzz Face seems to be overloaded ridiculously easily. It's a very delicate input which is why it seems to hate buffers in front of it, high output pickups, the colour of the shirt you're wearing, the position of the moon...everything.

So the first thing you want to do with your guitar when plugging into a Fuzz Face is turn the volume knob of your guitar down. Don't think of it as "I have less volume into my amp" think of it as "I am not driving the input of the Fuzz Face" as hard. This is why you want to crank the Level control to compensate for your volume loss (but even so, the FF will give a volume boost even with your guitar volume rolled off). When it gets to around 6\7, the Fuzz Face will no longer sound like a fart. It'll sound like a creamy, rich, snarling overdrive of deliciousness. You can make it "fart" more with more fuzz, or you can make it scream more and make it a bit ruder by pushing your amp harder with the level control.

HOWEVER: Since you are rolling off the volume, this is why I recommend using a pushed amp sound, rather than something super clean like you would another fuzz. I found if the amp was super clean, when I rolled the volume off to not overload the input of the Fuzz, even with the fuzz screaming it would "struggle" a little bit. So you get the amp clipping to compensate for the volume knob being rolled off.

As an aside: My G&L strat has a passive EQ. Instead of having a tone knob, it has a bass knob and a treble knob. On the neck pickup, if I rolled off the bass, it got nicer, and on the bridge pickup, if I rolled off the treble it got nicer as well. So I recommend playing with your tone knobs as well to get it to play nice.

Basically, if you give the input of this pedal too much of anything it will fart. You gotta treat this pedal nice or it will shit on your dreams.

SUMMARY:
The secret to this pedal is balancing your amp clipping with the level control, with the amount of fuzz, with the input from your guitar. Generally you want LESS from your guitar and your amp, and you use the Fuzz to compensate for the above, while trying to treat the pedal as gently as you would an egg.
- Roll off the volume on your guitar so that you don't overload the input on the FF itself.
- Push the amp into clipping to compensate for the volume roll-off.
- Use the level control on the FF to compensate for the volume roll-off and to push the amp into proper clipping.
- Use the Fuzz on the FF to give it the snarly fuzzy fun noise that you want.

NOTE: ALL OF THIS WAS LEARNED WITH JUST ONE NIGHT OF MESSING WITH THE PEDAL. I'm sure there's a lot more secrets that this box of awesome can do, but this is how I got good noises out of my pedal. So as a "starting point" I think this could be helpful.

NOTE 2: Since the input of this pedal is so damn sensitive (and seems to be an important part to the sound of the pedal), I would strongly recommend using an actual fuzz face over the Axe-FX version, but hey, maybe knowing how to approach this pedal will translate into the AFX version as well.
 
Alright, so I just got me a fuzz face yesterday. As in a real one. Getting one of those pedals to scream is not simple! So I'm going to share what I figured out and maybe that can help people figure out how to handle one in the AFX? I'm not an expert with the thing, but these experiments gave me a good starting point so maybe they can help somebody else get a good starting point too.

FIRST EXPERIMENTS:
The location of your Fuzz Face in your signal chain does make a big difference. When I had it in my True Bypass looper, it sounded different compared to plugging it straight into the front of the AFX. It hated having any buffered pedal in front of it, but there was even a slight change when it was in the bypass looper. Not sure how big of a deal this will make in an AFX, but it's something to consider.

(As an aside, how I powered the pedal ALSO changed the sound. Plugged into the power supply vs. using a battery gave different tones. I don't think this can be replicated in the AFX, but yes, the pedal is that sensitive).

Note: When I say "sounded different" I don't mean: "Oh wow, like this it has more bass!" I mean sounded different as in: "Okay...that's...a different sound entirely". We aint talking subtle here.

AMP SETTINGS:
This is one of those pedals which will work with some amps, but despise others. It will punish you for using the wrong amp. What I found worked great with the pedal is a pushed Marshall sorta sound.

Also, don't approach this pedal like you would a Muff or other fuzzes. I wouldn't use the Fuzz Face to be 100% responsible for my distorted tone like you would a Muff. Instead I used it kinda like an overdrive that made a fuzzy noise. I got the amp clipping (a bit) then used the Fuzz Face to push it into delicious, creamy but rude overdrive.

LEVEL vs FUZZ:
Okay, first of all, I wouldn't mess with the B\M\T until you have this pedal screaming. Reason being, the real pedal doesn't have those controls so you should probably get the pedal kicking ass before messing with extra stuff. Let's focus on Level\Fuzz because there be interesting things that happen here.

The level on my FF is LOUD. You can use it to push an amp really damn hard with the level control by itself. So you know how you got the amp clipping a bit? Use the level control to push it into proper OD. Push the level up really high as this will compensate for something else later on. Then you use the Fuzz control to bring in how much snarl you want. I kinda am approaching it more as a "Drive" and "Fuzz" control rather than a Volume\Drive control.

One of the secrets to the Fuzz Face seems to be finding the right balance between amp clipping, pushing that over the edge with the level control and then getting the right amount of fuzz so that it doesn't struggle, or fart out. Balancing the amp drive, level and fuzz is gonna be the trick to get this in the right area for your fuzz to sound right.

POSSIBLY MOST IMPORTANT: YOUR GUITAR VOLUME CONTROL.
Now I'm not an electronics guy so the following sentence may be absolute bullshit in terms of reality. HOWEVER, the input of a Fuzz Face seems to be overloaded ridiculously easily. It's a very delicate input which is why it seems to hate buffers in front of it, high output pickups, the colour of the shirt you're wearing, the position of the moon...everything.

So the first thing you want to do with your guitar when plugging into a Fuzz Face is turn the volume knob of your guitar down. Don't think of it as "I have less volume into my amp" think of it as "I am not driving the input of the Fuzz Face" as hard. This is why you want to crank the Level control to compensate for your volume loss (but even so, the FF will give a volume boost even with your guitar volume rolled off). When it gets to around 6\7, the Fuzz Face will no longer sound like a fart. It'll sound like a creamy, rich, snarling overdrive of deliciousness. You can make it "fart" more with more fuzz, or you can make it scream more and make it a bit ruder by pushing your amp harder with the level control.

HOWEVER: Since you are rolling off the volume, this is why I recommend using a pushed amp sound, rather than something super clean like you would another fuzz. I found if the amp was super clean, when I rolled the volume off to not overload the input of the Fuzz, even with the fuzz screaming it would "struggle" a little bit. So you get the amp clipping to compensate for the volume knob being rolled off.

As an aside: My G&L strat has a passive EQ. Instead of having a tone knob, it has a bass knob and a treble knob. On the neck pickup, if I rolled off the bass, it got nicer, and on the bridge pickup, if I rolled off the treble it got nicer as well. So I recommend playing with your tone knobs as well to get it to play nice.

Basically, if you give the input of this pedal too much of anything it will fart. You gotta treat this pedal nice or it will shit on your dreams.

SUMMARY:
The secret to this pedal is balancing your amp clipping with the level control, with the amount of fuzz, with the input from your guitar. Generally you want LESS from your guitar and your amp, and you use the Fuzz to compensate for the above, while trying to treat the pedal as gently as you would an egg.
- Roll off the volume on your guitar so that you don't overload the input on the FF itself.
- Push the amp into clipping to compensate for the volume roll-off.
- Use the level control on the FF to compensate for the volume roll-off and to push the amp into proper clipping.
- Use the Fuzz on the FF to give it the snarly fuzzy fun noise that you want.

NOTE: ALL OF THIS WAS LEARNED WITH JUST ONE NIGHT OF MESSING WITH THE PEDAL. I'm sure there's a lot more secrets that this box of awesome can do, but this is how I got good noises out of my pedal. So as a "starting point" I think this could be helpful.

NOTE 2: Since the input of this pedal is so damn sensitive (and seems to be an important part to the sound of the pedal), I would strongly recommend using an actual fuzz face over the Axe-FX version, but hey, maybe knowing how to approach this pedal will translate into the AFX version as well.

Great post! It's cool to see what people think when they have their first encounter with a real FF. Your ideas on how to use the FF to compliment a touch of amp grit pretty much match exactly what I've found. It's also worth pairing up a FF in front of something like an EHX Soul Food pedal set to add just a little bit of grit into a pretty clean amp. With the volume rolled back on the guitar, the FF becomes VERY sensitive to playing dynamics, so if you dig in a bit or play double-stops the distortion will pick up noticeably which can add a whole new dimension to your playing.

Generally, with a FF you won't have an LED either. This is because there's no way to isolate the LED from the rest of the circuit with a DPDT footswitch, so the LED actually mucks with the sound, too. Nowadays, you could have an LED if you used a 3PDT switch (which are actually affordable now), but then you'd have to abandon true bypass.

Another cool adjustment you can add to FF pedal is to simulate a partially dead battery by adding a 1M pot in between the battery and the rest of the circuit. It's not clear to me that it's exactly the same as using a somewhat drained battery, but it does add something that can help tame the over-the-top farting that a FF can have. Using an external power supply is going to supply power that is too "hard", a battery has the equivalent of "sag" which contributes to the sound of the Fuzz.

A battery in a FF without an LED will last a lifetime, so there's no real need for external power. I prefer a toggle switch to turn off the power, rather than (or maybe as well as) using the input jack as a switch.

Also, I haven't verified this myself, but some people seem to feel that bleed caps on the volume pots of your guitar have an adverse affect on the tone of the FF when you dial back the volume on the guitar.
 
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@H13 the Fuzz Face’s circuit is exceptionally sensitive to the input load. That’s why guitar -> fuzz face is so remarkably different from guitar -> buffer -> fuzz face (which is what putting it in the loop essentially does). The internal drive models don’t respond to input load, so placing them at different points in the virtual signal chain does not have the same effect on the sound the way moving the real pedal around in. your analog chain does.
 
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Won’t work on Ax8, but on Axe-Fx change the input impedance in the noise gate to 90k. Not Auto.

Makes a difference with feel and guitar volume knob changes with fuzz.
 
The "key" with the FAS drive models, Fuzz Face et al., is that you can't use just the volume pot on your guitar to change the overall tone. Roll the volume back and it just doesn't clean up, yet keep the level, like a good hardware fuzz pedal.

HOWEVER, you can get nearly any fuzz face tone out of the FAS drive models. I've got my Analogman NKT red dot and Chase Tone Red Stardust, two of the best Ge fuzzes made in front of my Axe, and they both have a wide range of tones with just the volume pot. As I said, I can't just roll the volume back on the FAS drive or it sounds weak.

What I can do though is turn the drive down, turn the level up, and add a little highs back, and I can get that smokey, edge of breakup, part fuzz/part OD tone from the Axe. Basically instead of just the volume pot on the guitar dynamically changing the fuzz, you've got to tweak 3 or 4 parameters to make it respond the same.

As such, I set up an X/Y and use that instead of the volume pot and I can get nearly identical tones. Its of course cool having that huge range of tones from 6-10 on the volume pot, and very interactive to play, but if you can accept just a few points in-between the FAS drives can work well, and provide advantages such as running a wah in front of the fuzz.

I love the FAS wah's, but, when I put my hardware fuzz in front, the wah doesn't sound right. Wah needs to go before fuzz, but I can't stick my hardware fuzz into a line level FX loop on the Axe, so I need to use the FAS drive models after the FAS wah block. Can't find any way to get around, short of running a hardware wah, and then a hardware fuzz.
 
I'd really like to see a FF drive block with a control that simulates the guitar volume roll-back's effect on the circuit. I'd like to see it implemented with the ability to add an external controller, so it can be assign to an expression pedal.

It would also be cool to see a FF drive model with some way to control the characteristics of the emulated power supply, so that the effects of a weak battery or different battery types or an external power supply can be modeled.
 
Adjusting the bias gives a good approximation of a weaker battery. Doesn’t get all the way “Velcro” style fuzz but gets it close

This is true. When I A/B pedals to axe-fx to match up, i will play with the bias setting to tune it to original pedal — good tip!
 
Here are two block files of a silicon BC108 fuzz, and a little warmer BC183 voiced fuzz

Sound really good into an edge of breakup plexi style amp, and with single coils (I created on a strat with CS69's)

Certain factors will vary, but there were dialed in via an a/b with my hardware SolidGoldFx pedals to where I couldn't tell the tone apart.

I'll try to share a couple of my Chase Tone Red Stardust Germanium and Analogman NKT Red dot germanium
 

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Here are two block files of a silicon BC108 fuzz, and a little warmer BC183 voiced fuzz

Nice, will check these out this weekend, thanks for the share!

I'll try to share a couple of my Chase Tone Red Stardust Germanium and Analogman NKT Red dot germanium

Ooh, yes please. Never had the real pedal, but from what I’ve heard in recorded clips that NKT Red dot is one of the finest FF style fuzzes I’ve heard... save me some GAS ;)
 
Here are two block files of a silicon BC108 fuzz, and a little warmer BC183 voiced fuzz

Sound really good into an edge of breakup plexi style amp, and with single coils (I created on a strat with CS69's)

Certain factors will vary, but there were dialed in via an a/b with my hardware SolidGoldFx pedals to where I couldn't tell the tone apart.

I'll try to share a couple of my Chase Tone Red Stardust Germanium and Analogman NKT Red dot germanium

Looking forward to checking these out! Thank you for sharing!
 
I love the Face Fuzz - have it as my drive 2 after the Timmy and not only do they give me 2 totally different flavors but they also sound fantastic when both on together.
 
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