Fuzz pedals (real)

USMC_Trev said:
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.
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When it comes to fuzz pedals, I massively disagree with this.

Fuzz is probably the fussiest effect in the guitar world. The pedal needs to like your guitar, your pickups, the other pedals in the chain, the amp it's going into, the position of the moon, it can be pretty painful.

If you disagree with that sentence, get yourself a fuzz face and try the following things:
- Put it first in the chain (with no other pedals on)
- Put it last (again, with no other pedals on)
- Plug it in with an adapter
- Run it with a battery
- Run it with no other pedals.

It'll sound fairly different in each configuration. In some of those conditions it'll be flat-out unusable.

The fuzz in the AFX is enough to give you an idea about what the fuzz sounds like but unless you are super knoweldgable about that particular fuzz, I don't think you could tweak it to get it "right".

The 2 most popular fuzz pedals in the world are a good starting point:

- Big Muff
The Muff is a big, mid-scooped, screaming ugly mess in a wonderful way. However, oddly enough, a lot of the "mess" doesn't necessarily come out in the mix and instead you just get this creamy, sooth distorted tone. Gilmour used it for most of The Wall and that's a damn pretty distorted sound aint it?

Use it in the cleanest amp you can find. Push the volume on the pedal to drive the amp a little bit. Don't be conservative with the "sustain" (AKA: Drive). This is a pedal that's happier the more it punishes your rig. Mine likes heavier picks and a heavy pick attack so dig in. The joy I have with the pedal is that if you play "big", then it sounds right. So exaggerate and get into it, then it gets rewarding.

I recommend a JHS Muffuletta (or however it's spelled). It copies the circuits of all the different muff types (THERE'S a 2 week rabbit hole...) so you can find the flavour you like.

- Fuzz Face
A tricky bastard, but rewarding as hell when you figure it out. Firstly, the input of a Fuzz Face is extremely sensitive. You will fart out and sound like crap if you run it with full volume. So plug it in, then roll your guitar volume back halfway. Run the pedal volume hard and with a tonne of the fuzz to compensate for the volume drop off. While a Muff will take over your sound, a Fuzz Face you can KINDA use like an OD as an enhancer. It's a very natural sorta clipping sound and you can actually get lovely clean sounds out of a Fuzz Face when you roll the volume all the way back. I like to run the Fuzz Face into an overdriven amp again to compensate for the volume loss.

Basically with the fuzz face, gain staging is key. However, once you get your guitar volume, pedal volume, amp volume and amp gain all balanced, you will be rewarded with some gorgeous and very sweet guitar tones. They also feel fantastic to play because the input on them is so sensitive, they will react to everything you do (for better or worse). I love fuzz faces, but they're tricky.

A tonne of other fuzzes are kinda based off these two. These are your main "genres" of fuzz and probably the best place to start to find your flavour.
 
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One thing I never understood with fuzzes is how come in 2018 we can't come up with some decent technology so it doesn't have to be first in your signal chain. We can send probes to Pluto and the Outer Rim, but we still have to put fuzzes first in our chain? Lazy designing if you ask me.

Fortunately the Big Muff does not care where you place it, even Gilmour had it behind shitloads of buffers, as Pete Cornish puts buffers on everything, even his breakfast cereal. And I got a Skreddy Lunar Module clone, a recreation of Gilmour's Dark Side of the Moon tone, which was a Fuzz Face too, and it has sits perfectly fine behind buffers as well.
 
H13 said:
- Fuzz Face
A tricky bastard, but rewarding as hell when you figure it out. Firstly, the input of a Fuzz Face is extremely sensitive. You will fart out and sound like crap if you run it with full volume. So plug it in, then roll your volume back halfway. Run the volume hard and with a tonne of the fuzz to compensate for the volume drop off. While a Muff will take over your sound, a Fuzz Face you can KINDA use like an OD as an enhancer. It's a very natural sorta clipping sound and you can actually get lovely clean sounds out of a Fuzz Face when you roll the volume all the way back. I like to run the Fuzz Face into an overdriven amp again to compensate for the volume loss.
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That's a nice tip!

Another way to dial a Fuzz Face in is to run the volume on your guitar as low as you can. Dial in the pedal until your clean sound is audible and good with the guitar volume down. Then use the volume on your guitar to have all the possible sounds in between the clean and fuzz depending on your pedal.
 
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Muad'zin said:
One thing I never understood with fuzzes is how come in 2018 we can't come up with some decent technology so it doesn't have to be first in your signal chain. We can send probes to Pluto and the Outer Rim, but we still have to put fuzzes first in our chain? Lazy designing if you ask me.

Fortunately the Big Muff does not care where you place it, even Gilmour had it behind shitloads of buffers, as Pete Cornish puts buffers on everything, even his breakfast cereal. And I got a Skreddy Lunar Module clone, a recreation of Gilmour's Dark Side of the Moon tone, which was a Fuzz Face too, and it has sits perfectly fine behind buffers as well.
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This is true. The muff don't really care about anything. A muff gonna muff no matter where the muff you put it. They're like Golden Retrievers. Big, fluffy, dumb, but christ it loves you.

Meanwhile...Fuzz faces are like cats. It might like you if you do absolutely everything right.
 
There are plenty of fuzz pedals that don’t care where they are placed. The White Atom for example, sounds great anywhere in the chain but can do clsssic fuzz face sounds. The Axis fuzz, the Deep Tripp BoG, etc, all designed with input and/or output buffers. As mentioned already Big Muff style pedals as well. Chase Tone Red Velvet....

If you want a pedal that is the exact circuit of an original fuzz face, then yes, it needs to go first for the expected response. It’s like if you want the exact spec tires that came on a vintage muscle car, then yeah, it’s going to have limitations vs a modern tire compound, it’s the price of authenticity. Many though might put modern tires and ABS on a vintage car though, making it not 100% period correct but more usable overall.

Some is true of fuzz, if you want the exact 11 parts, or do you want soemthing that has been modified to solve some initial issues while still delivering the vintage tones
 
H13 said:
This is true. The muff don't really care about anything. A muff gonna muff no matter where the muff you put it. They're like Golden Retrievers. Big, fluffy, dumb, but christ it loves you.

Meanwhile...Fuzz faces are like cats. It might like you if you do absolutely everything right.
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Hmm, I do like Muffs, but I also like cats a lot. And then I don't like the Fuzz Face. Does that make me a screwed up cat person?

Seriously though, the Fuzz Face is too smooth for my taste. If I want fuzz its either a Muff for leads, or something really gnarly and evil sounding for rhythm. And which doesn't get lost in the mix either. As many fuzzes have a bad habit of doing.
 
Get a FY2 Companion fuzz, or a version of it like the EQD Terminal fuzz, about as far away from smooth as you can get. Searing, buzz saw, ripping Velcro type tone for days. Cuts through anything, even sounds great on bass. It does one thing and does it well lol.
 
H13 said:
When it comes to fuzz pedals, I massively disagree with this.
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H13: I disagree!
Trev: Noted.
H13: I massively disagree!
Trev: Oh well then you have my attention.

:D

I'm imagining a state of disagreement that has actual physical mass.
 
I think there are two fuzz ‘families’ made up of the Muffs and the Fuzzfaces. I for one reside in Muff territory, I haven’t heard a fuzzface I like.
You can now get a variety of Muff sounds in the one pedal, the JHS Muffuletta which supposedly has 6 muff circuits in it. 5 recreations of old models and a newbie. There’s the Big Tone Music Brewery Royal Beaver that lets you swap out the number and type of transistors in the circuit. I have both pedals...the Muffuletta is pretty easy to dial in while the Royal Beaver is aimed at musos wnating to get their own thing out of the available circuitry.
Youtube clips will give you a taste for each fuzz flavour.
 


I don't think that the XL can do this.

I tried modeling my fuzzes at one time. The only way that I had any success was when I mimicked my Prescription Electronics Experience pedal. I had to tone match it though. It took forever. It could also be due to the user.
 
I feel like going bankrupt with new fuzz pedals... But this Jam pedals fuzz face I got yesterday sounds amazing! Got it for a really good price too...



Also bought a Dunlop Germanium Fuzz Face a few weeks ago. I thought it sounded fizzy and horrible at first so I decided to get rid of it... until I found out it has a trim pot inside for the bias. It's like night and day now. Now I can't decide whether to keep it or not.



SO if you're up for trying out a fuzz face type of fuzz and don't want to spend a fortune on a boutique Analogman, you can do great with a Dunlop.
 
Or you could just spend 25$ on parts and build your own? :p:D For a Fuzz Face $10 for a matched pair of transistors, the rest is the other parts. An additional $8 if you want a pcb instead of a vero layout. It's not rocket science, it's one of the easiest circuits in the world. The only trick is in getting a matched pair of trannies.
 
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