Fuzz pedals (real)

pauliusmm

pauliusmm

Fractal Fanatic
I never owned a fuzz pedal, and now i want to explore this land a little bit.
Can someone recommend some pedals?
I want a fuzz for soloing with my single coil tele. Maybe some octave (up) fuzz, but other suggestions also welcome.
 
Have you tried all the fuzz models in the Axe-FX? You've been around long enough to know that what you want is in the box, it's just a matter of setting the preset up.

I'm a big proponent of preventing people from wasting money on hardware when they already have an Axe-FX and can conjur up pretty much anything with a little knowledge and community help.
 
The Axe can cover a wide range of fuzz sounds, but, there is still something to be said for a good fuzz pedal. The dynamic interaction you get from passive guitar pickups connected to a fuzz face, going from raging fuzz to spanking clean with a small twist of the volume pot just can’t be readily reproduced in the Axe.

Same goes for the really ripping voltage starved transistor tones. You can get in the ballpark with some bit reduction, but there just isn’t a specific parameter to allow a spot on “Velcro” fuzz tone with the current drive blocks.

I’d start with the Axe, and it can cover a ton of ground with some tweaks, stacking blocks, etc, but if you really love fuzz, and are the type who has a big collection of fuzz, then the Axe isn’t going to cover all the unique bases of the fuzz universe.
 
Imo it's really hard to cover existing fuzz pedals without knowing how they sound in real life. You can use Youtube depending on how good ears you have of course. If you already have THE sound in your head, then you can just try to emulate that.

Buy the real fuzz pedal and then try to emulate it in Fractal. Sell the pedal if you don't need it anymore.

Thinking about buying just one fuzz pedal is like opening a can of worms though, so be careful...
 
I am a long time Fractal user, I've tried all drive models, but i keep hearing how awesome real fuzz pedals are, so i want to give it a shot.
 
Love the Analog Man Sun Face Fuzz pedal.

The fuzzes in the Axe-FX are great, but when you want that real world dynamic control and cleanup of a fuzz when you turn down guitar volume it’s sometimes nice to have an actual pedal that interacts with the actual pickup impedance...
 
I can say that I have not tried any pedals of late. I am at the point where I want portability, ease of set up and simplicity. Personally, all fo my performances are through FOH. I really doubt that the vast majority of my audiences are tone connoisseurs. I am NOT saying pearls before swine, but I am saying that the FAS sounds are very compelling and inspiring for me as a player. At the business end of the speakers, I really doubt that the average listener is so discriminating. I think for most of the audiences I play for the listening experience boils down to, "I like it or I don't like it". That judgement is based on the overall sound of the music, not the tone of the guitar player.
 
I don’t think audiences care for nuance, but there certainly plenty of songs with a pretty unique tone. You could certainly play a song like “spirit in the sky” through a cranked Marshall and it would sound “fine”, but if you play it with a Jordan BossTone, and your teles tone pot rolled al the way off, it does have a certain something extra, capturing that true 60’s raw fuzz tone.

Having different guitars with different pickups is fun. Having a bunch on fuzz pedals, crazy noise makers etc is fun too. I think that is why people who love fuzz usually can’t stop collecting more pedals, they all behave and sound so unique. Sometimes they sound so bad it sounds good.

Fuzz can inspire a new song idea because you have to change your playing for certain fuzz, single notes, change your attack etc.
 
There's so many great fuzz pedals out there, it's overwhelming. Really, start trying a bunch and keep the ones you like.
 
Geezerjohn said:
I can say that I have not tried any pedals of late. I am at the point where I want portability, ease of set up and simplicity. Personally, all fo my performances are through FOH. I really doubt that the vast majority of my audiences are tone connoisseurs. I am NOT saying pearls before swine, but I am saying that the FAS sounds are very compelling and inspiring for me as a player. At the business end of the speakers, I really doubt that the average listener is so discriminating. I think for most of the audiences I play for the listening experience boils down to, "I like it or I don't like it". That judgement is based on the overall sound of the music, not the tone of the guitar player.
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I daresay the average listener pays 10x more attention to your singer then to your tone.

lqdsnddist said:
I don’t think audiences care for nuance, but there certainly plenty of songs with a pretty unique tone. You could certainly play a song like “spirit in the sky” through a cranked Marshall and it would sound “fine”, but if you play it with a Jordan BossTone, and your teles tone pot rolled al the way off, it does have a certain something extra, capturing that true 60’s raw fuzz tone.
Click to expand...

Maybe to you, but again, the average listener is paying 10x more attention to your singer then to you. As long you're playing what the listener expects to hear tone will not matter one bit, except the tone connaisseur. A.K.A. the guitar player in the audience. But you're never going to please him anyway, as the only thing that will satisfy him is taking your place.
 
pauliusmm said:
this one seems to sound great on youtube.

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I don't think Prescription Electronics is a company anymore (they were one of the early "boutique" pedal makers back in the 90s), so I'd expect to pay "vintage" prices on things from them. Not familiar with the Face Lift myself, but I bet it's great. I still have one of their Experience Pedal (sadly not in the cool psychedelic swirl paint job, one of the purple ones) fuzzes -- I gather it was their take on the Foxx Tone Machine style fuzz circuit, and it had an octave fuzz and "swell" (sort of a backwards tape to sputtering and dying sounding fuzz) features as well -- was a very cool sounding fuzz pedal, they definitely made some really cool stuff back in the day... I know some people still swear by their C.O.B. (Clean Octave Blend) pedal for the Octavia thing (originals of that pedal fetch crazy money these days I believe).
 
The Fulltone Soulbender is a nice fuzz tone with a telecaster.

Dweezil Zappa uses a lot of different fuzz tones. He has found a lot of good ones. You can hear him demo them in these videos.



 
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trancegodz said:
The Fulltone Soulbender is a nice fuzz tone with a telecaster.

Dweezil Zappa uses a lot of different fuzz tones. He has found a lot of good ones. You can hear him demo them in these videos.



Click to expand...

Yes he does.......here is mine, Dweezil commissioned a bunch to include for one of his crowdfunders..from goochFX and DZ did the hand painted labeling himself!
 
Muad'zin said:
I daresay the average listener pays 10x more attention to your singer then to your tone.



Maybe to you, but again, the average listener is paying 10x more attention to your singer then to you. As long you're playing what the listener expects to hear tone will not matter one bit, except the tone connaisseur. A.K.A. the guitar player in the audience. But you're never going to please him anyway, as the only thing that will satisfy him is taking your place.
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By that logic we probably need not show up with a $2500 Axe III, any old modeler would suffice fine. Or heck, we could actually just stay home and let a singer do their thing to a backing track lol.

In all serious, I think it depends on the type of music your playing, if vocals are even a big part of your act etc. I played more jam band type stuff where we didn’t really have much in the way of vocals (nor much of an audience lol) but I do think the overall guitar tones, effects et al, where a big part of the sound, and a part that the audience we had was into. Essentially we made crazy noisy for other dudes who would stand around and appreciate us making crazy noises lol.

Fun times, but certainly a world apart from playing brown eyed girl at a wedding reception type of audience
 
lqdsnddist said:
By that logic we probably need not show up with a $2500 Axe III, any old modeler would suffice fine. Or heck, we could actually just stay home and let a singer do their thing to a backing track lol.

In all serious, I think it depends on the type of music your playing, if vocals are even a big part of your act etc. I played more jam band type stuff where we didn’t really have much in the way of vocals (nor much of an audience lol) but I do think the overall guitar tones, effects et al, where a big part of the sound, and a part that the audience we had was into. Essentially we made crazy noisy for other dudes who would stand around and appreciate us making crazy noises lol.

Fun times, but certainly a world apart from playing brown eyed girl at a wedding reception type of audience
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Yeah, well, you really don't need to show up with a $2500 Axe III. Even with a jam band you could play a $50 DS-1 into a $200 solid state amp, provided what you play is good, the whole band has good energy and everything sits well in the mix. The audience simply does not care about tone. That's in our heads. Now it might be that you need to mimic a certain sound that can only be done with one pedal, and that's a good enough reason to get that pedal. But even then, a decent approximation by something else will do. I've played Radiohead covers with whatever gear I had on hand and with the correct Radiohead gear, I did not notice any difference in the way the audience perceived it and the compliments I got over the show. The only compliments I got in the latter's case was, wow, those are a lot of pedals.

Obviously it has to sound good together, but in the grand scheme of what an audience will notice from your performance is what you play and good energy. Tone? 99.9% never!
 
If you want that Octave Fuzz sound the only thing that comes close is the Roger Mayer

I'm a huge fan of the Slash Octave Fuzz- it's like Prince in a box

My favorite pedal- not a traditional fuzz- but is all over the place in terms of what it can do- Zvex Fuzz Factory

BUT you can start cheap with a dunlop or big muff- I hate fuzz so you might start with that before diving into something better
 
Jeries said:
If you want that Octave Fuzz sound the only thing that comes close is the Roger Mayer

I'm a huge fan of the Slash Octave Fuzz- it's like Prince in a box

My favorite pedal- not a traditional fuzz- but is all over the place in terms of what it can do- Zvex Fuzz Factory

BUT you can start cheap with a dunlop or big muff- I hate fuzz so you might start with that before diving into something better
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I think the Octavia effect in the Axe is actually really quite good. I sold my Catalinbread Octapussy after comparing the two. I had a Mayer rocket ship Octavia as well and to be honest, it was always a little thin sounding.

The Axe can’t do all Fuzz sounds equally well, but the FZ1a Maestro it can do fantastic, As does it do a really spot on Octavio
 
I got a real original FZ1a Maestro... worked fine, worked perfect- sounded good (tone bender sounded a little better to me though)
Changed the battery and popped out like the spring and all the stuff that hold it in- took it to my amp guy to fix- all he did was make it worse and noisy and not work at all- sold it broken for 200

sad
 
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