Fuzz roundup

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Jondog
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Re: Fuzz roundup

Post by Jondog » Fri Feb 19, 2021 8:14 pm

Gorgar wrote:
Fri Feb 19, 2021 5:30 pm
I had no idea this forum was still going. Glad to see it! This was always my favorite music-oriented forum.

I am a big germanium fuzz fiend. I especially love distortion into fuzz.

My main fuzz is still an Analogman Sunlion (white dot NKT). It's got that beefy, creamy, Kyuss-like sound, and it's the most interesting of all my fuzzes to listen to the texture of. Everything sounds good through it. Battery only, would never take it anywhere now that they're so hard to come by. I've also got a red dot, which sounds more ZZ Top. It's pretty good too, but I don't use it as much. It's one pedal I can run in front of the white dot without issue though.

I've tried a bunch of other fuzzes looking for something less valuable and more pedalboard friendly that'll run off normal power, and for me the clear winner was BAT Son of Pharoah. Nice small pedals, very friendly to other pedals run before them. I have two with no silicon option, mine are symmetrical and asymmetrical germanium instead. Mark at BAT was great to work with. Also have a Pharoah Supreme. For me, the Pharoahs are the gold standard of modern fuzz. If I want fuzz in a spot in the chain and just want it to work and sound good, I'll use a Pharoah.

Also really like some MXR fuzzes: Sub Machine, Sub Octave Bass Fuzz, Blue Box. The SOBF is really usable with bass.

My favorite sound is an old Distortion+ into the Sunlion. Horribly noisy, but sounds glorious. A pedal that gets surprisingly close to that (without the noise) is the Catalinbread Katzenkoenig. If I had to take just one dirt pedal somewhere, that would be the one. It's no substitute for the beef of a Fuzz Face, but it adds a pleasant heft without losing the top end. Good if you like a controlled searing somewhat fuzzy lead.

Also have tried and liked: OBNE Alpha Haunt, SVISound GeFuzz (Bulgarian!), Occvlt Old Hag (Polish!), EQD Dream Crusher. These are generally fiddlier but they do have some great sounds in them.

Tried and just not gotten on with: Red Witch Fuzz God, Catalinbread Sabra Cadabra, BAT Black Sheep. Not bad pedals, just didn't work for me. Might be just the thing for different guitars and amps.
Those Analog man fuzz’s are awesome and from what I remember from an interview with Mike Piera (owner/builder of Analogman) he only has/had so many of that particular transistor and once they’re gone thats it.
Now I’m thinking I need a Pharoh again!!
Not too surprised you didn’t get on with the Fuzz God. I owned two and one was better than the other, didn’t get on with the one at all really, was strange.
Blue Box is one of my favourites too.
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Gorgar
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Re: Fuzz roundup

Post by Gorgar » Sat Feb 20, 2021 7:06 am

The white dot NKTs, which are the ones that clean up the best apparently, are long gone. It's too bad, as I'd really like to run two of those in series, and also backups are good. Makes me wonder if I could find another old, less good pedal and send it to Mike to pull the transistors out to make another Sunlion. The cleanup sounds especially good on a Strat to give it a fuller sound.

My problems with the Fuzz God were that I'm not really that into silicon fuzz, and mine seemed to have a bad jack or something. Sold it eventually. But Red Witch makes some pretty good stuff. I like both the Empress and Medusa, and I have more Moon Phaser Deluxes than I really ought to. I love them for splitting into a pair of amps, or in the mono send/stereo return of a JC-120. At one point I had three in one signal chain. They're great phasers used normally, but I like the subtle trem-phase you get by using the top output into the chain and a dummy plug in the bottom one, or by splitting into a pair of amps.

Not enough Orange content in this post, so here's how I usually run my Thunderverbs these days: no pedals except an old Moon Phaser Deluxe from when they did custom colors, and I found an orange one. It was clear what to do with it...

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bclaire
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Re: Fuzz roundup

Post by bclaire » Sat Feb 20, 2021 4:24 pm

I forgot that I have a Voodoolab Proctavia permanently mounted in my rack so I can call it up in my G-System.

I have to say, it's tough to hear any effect with it. Johnny A. said to me that you really need to use neck pickups when you use an Octavia-style pedal as the effect is most prominent with a neck pickup. Like I said, it's permanently mounted so it's not like I can go in easily and tweak settings... I found something that worked (think the guitar sound of The Black Keys' Gold on the Ceiling) and left the settings like that.

I have an early version without an LED to indicate whether it's on or not so that's another reason why it's mounted in the rack, always on. When I first got it, I couldn't tell whether it was on or not often! ha ha ha

http://www.voodoolab.com/proctavia.htm

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bfitz
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Re: Fuzz roundup

Post by bfitz » Wed Feb 24, 2021 2:38 pm

I went with the Moose Electronics Nomad. https://www.moosetwentythree.com/shop/nomad it has arrived and its a beast of a thing. It has a really clever clean blend control where you can bring the clean signal (with low pass filtering options) back into the output as well as both germanium and silicone transistors you can choose or combine. Then the octave its killer! My wife and our little person headed down to the in laws this morning. Needless to say I pulled out the AD30 and went for it. It's so so cool into a valve amp. I remember when I had an RV100 and just couldn't get along with fuzz cos there was so much clean headroom and with the Tiny Terror there wasn't enough. I guess you need to be at the point of breakup to get a fuzz really working properly eh? 30 Watts seems to be a happy place for me!
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Wendigo
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Re: Fuzz roundup

Post by Wendigo » Thu Feb 25, 2021 4:57 am

bclaire wrote:
Tue Feb 16, 2021 11:22 am
I'll be interested to read people's thoughts on this. I've considered getting a fuzz but.... which one?

I think I want a Sola variant tone bender....
I got a "Bonetender" that I swear by....just sounds like old zeppelin Sola fuzz. Cleans up brilliantly too. I think you can only get them used now.

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bclaire
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Re: Fuzz roundup

Post by bclaire » Thu Feb 25, 2021 11:23 am

Wendigo wrote:
Thu Feb 25, 2021 4:57 am
bclaire wrote:
Tue Feb 16, 2021 11:22 am
I'll be interested to read people's thoughts on this. I've considered getting a fuzz but.... which one?

I think I want a Sola variant tone bender....
I got a "Bonetender" that I swear by....just sounds like old zeppelin Sola fuzz. Cleans up brilliantly too. I think you can only get them used now.
Bonetender, huh? I'll have to start looking for one!

bfitz
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Re: Fuzz roundup

Post by bfitz » Thu Feb 25, 2021 5:12 pm

This is starting to look like old times!
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Orange AD30
Groove Tubes Soul-O 75
Orange PPC 212 OB
Boss Nextone 40
Fender CIJ Pink Paisley Tele
Fender Classic Player Strat 50s
Yamaha SA1200s
Gibson Les Paul Standard
Gibson SG Jnr

bclaire
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Re: Fuzz roundup

Post by bclaire » Thu Feb 25, 2021 6:57 pm

I think we should single-handedly resurrect it....

bfitz
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Re: Fuzz roundup

Post by bfitz » Fri Feb 26, 2021 1:14 pm

bclaire wrote:
Thu Feb 25, 2021 6:57 pm
I think we should single-handedly resurrect it....
YASSSSSSS! :D
Image

Orange AD30
Groove Tubes Soul-O 75
Orange PPC 212 OB
Boss Nextone 40
Fender CIJ Pink Paisley Tele
Fender Classic Player Strat 50s
Yamaha SA1200s
Gibson Les Paul Standard
Gibson SG Jnr

Jondog
Duke of Orange
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Location: Ontario, Canada

Re: Fuzz roundup

Post by Jondog » Fri Feb 26, 2021 8:04 pm

Nice to see some activity! Its even got my GAS going
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bclaire
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Re: Fuzz roundup

Post by bclaire » Sat Feb 27, 2021 2:06 pm

Not sure what a good price for a used Bonetender should be. I saw one on Reverb I think (or maybe ebay) for $140.

groundmeat
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Re: Fuzz roundup

Post by groundmeat » Thu Mar 04, 2021 2:49 pm

The precious.

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A mid-90's EHX tall font or early bubble font Big Muff is a really good one. They are kinda hard to find now. I spent about 2 years checking the Guitar Center website every day looking for one, and just after Xmas 2019, a store up in Illinois got one and they priced it about 210, which I thought was pretty good. In my opinion the tall font and early bubble font versions are the best ones because they use the resin filled pots that will stay almost completely noiseless forever.

From what I hear, the Wren and Cuff tall font russian is a pretty spot on clone, never played one myself. I have played a Wren and Cuff Box of War though, which is a clone of the earlier "civil war" Big Muff like David Gilmour used in the 90's, and it sounds really good too, a little less rude sounding than a typical muff.

I've also got one of the EHX reissues of the Op-Amp muff... but I'm not crazy about it. It's very brash sounding, not a lot of variety to it when tweaking the knobs. If you want that late 90's grunge-grind kinda sound like Smashing Pumpkins or Bush, it does that great. But it just "grinds", and that's about it, whereas other Muffs you can kinda dial back the distortion to almost use it like an overdrive. The op-amp muff, no matter where you set the distortion knob, it's the same kinda tone.

I also have the Fulltone OctaFuzz. There's plenty of octave fuzz pedals out there, and most of them sound acceptable. With the exception of the MXR blue box. That thing sounds bad. Some people love it though. It's a unique thing, either you hate it or you love it. Cool thing about the Fulltone OctaFuzz though is you can disengage the octave with a toggle switch and it becomes a fairly interesting plain old fuzz pedal. Some good RAWK tones.

groundmeat
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Re: Fuzz roundup

Post by groundmeat » Fri Mar 05, 2021 9:42 pm

I know the topic is "fuzz"... I know this... we know this... but... I should also mention...

I dunno about other Orange amps, but my Rockerverb 100 mk3 is kinda lacking in the high frequency zone at lower volumes. I keep the treble maxed out, and it still isn't quite bright enough. To solve this problem, I considered getting an eq pedal. But part of what got me to give up Marshall for an Orange was the simplified knobistry they employ. A 10-band EQ is not simple anymore. So instead, I figured I'd try the "treble booster" approach that everyone was raving about... since all I needed was to BOOST the TREBLE anyway.

Seems like most people prefer the Analogman Beano boost, but since I'm from near Athens GA, I figured I'd support a local company like Greer Amps and try one of their Moonshot treble boosters. I've seen some reviews that hated it. But I got one and it works PERFECTLY for me. It gooses the treble precisely where I need it. With the boost at about 45%, it boosts the clean channel really well to get some extra sparkle and spank with a strat. At WIDE-OPEN 100% on the dirty channel, it makes this amp shoot blue and white flames out at you. And what are you trying to do with a fuzz? You usually wanna get a "screaming" kinda tone (unless its more of a "buzzy" kinda thing you're going for). No better way to do that than with a treble booster. Another thing to think about for a live situation, your fuzz pedal is almost always gonna sound WAY different from your amps dirt sound. It's gonna be a lot tighter, especially if it's an EL34 amp. So if you're switching between the clean channel + fuzz pedal and dirty channel tones in a single song, you're probably gonna have some VERY noticable tonal differences going on. Whereas with a treble booster, you keep the overall sound the same, you're just blasting the hell out of the input with extra gain to get more drive.

Just my philosophy about it... The AMP should be where the overwhelming majority of your tone is coming from. Dirt pedals, as good as a couple of them might be, will never overthrow a truly great tube amp for the #1 position in the tone race. Distortion pedals and fuzz pedals are kinda like lottery tickets. You keep buying tons of them, but if you were smart, you'd just save your money as long as it takes and drop a huge chunk on a really really good sounding amp and be done with it.

bfitz
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Re: Fuzz roundup

Post by bfitz » Mon Apr 12, 2021 4:20 pm

The GAS won! I couldn't resist and it was a steal on Reverb

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This thing is :shock: :shock: :shock:

At low gain with the bias turned down its in the Led Zep territory completely like dazed and confused or communication breakdown but wind up the fuzz and the bias and your into that spitty, gated, velcro jack white kinda thing. When you mess around with the guitar volume you get a lot here too. With everything else in between its a really really versatile fuzz. The active EQ is also really cool as well. This thing wont get lost in the mix like a big muff an ats for sure.

B
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Orange AD30
Groove Tubes Soul-O 75
Orange PPC 212 OB
Boss Nextone 40
Fender CIJ Pink Paisley Tele
Fender Classic Player Strat 50s
Yamaha SA1200s
Gibson Les Paul Standard
Gibson SG Jnr

Jondog
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Joined: Thu Aug 21, 2008 12:16 pm
Location: Ontario, Canada

Re: Fuzz roundup

Post by Jondog » Mon Apr 12, 2021 10:11 pm

bfitz wrote:
Mon Apr 12, 2021 4:20 pm
The GAS won! I couldn't resist and it was a steal on Reverb

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This thing is :shock: :shock: :shock:

At low gain with the bias turned down its in the Led Zep territory completely like dazed and confused or communication breakdown but wind up the fuzz and the bias and your into that spitty, gated, velcro jack white kinda thing. When you mess around with the guitar volume you get a lot here too. With everything else in between its a really really versatile fuzz. The active EQ is also really cool as well. This thing wont get lost in the mix like a big muff an ats for sure.

B
NICE! I’ve been holding back from buying this one, and now I’m getting anxious! Gonna go have a beer!
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