Re: 10 fuzzes to rule them all!
Posted: Mon Jan 22, 2024 11:36 am
did i do this before? i'm not waiting for 10 pages to load to find out.
in no particular order:
1. MXR Distortion+. oh yes it is.
2. Tone Bender MK III. CMC Effects clone. a bit more rambunctious than my old Tone Reaper.
3. Buzzaround. CMC Effects. he altered the circuit by adding a master volume knob, which allows you to draw out additional gain combinations that were too quiet with the standard circuit. i love this thing to bits. it's better than the Sound Shank i used to have.
4. Fuzzhugger Algal Bloom. Tom made a small-box version for me. it was stored for ages...when i did the 17-item Great Fuzz Shootout (for five available single-sized slots) it came back. it's almost impossible to make it sound ugly, even when you push the controls to the extremes. you don't hear about them much nowadays, but you should. to use that over-used term, it's a really musical fuzz.
5. Fuzzhugger 3-knob Great Wall. This is the only GW exactly like this in existence. i looked it up: Tom built two small-box 3-knob GWs in single-width enclosures painted by Ben Nerison with different controls on each, so as far as i know this is the only one ever made. i really should have him make me a backup, because it's literally irreplaceable and it's one of the two cornerstones of my dirt sound along with the D+. one is least gainy, one is most gainy, and the others fill the space between.
6. Tone Machine. Danelectro 3699. sick sick SICK. too crazy for my board, but too great to sell. i don't even use the octave switch because it's already in Daft City without it.
7. Fuzzhugger Velcroar. i have a big-box Velcroscillator, but it's not quite the same as the tiny one i sold like a fool. with the Roar all the way left it sounded just like Rust Never Sleeps. all you need is a good octave divider. i have a standing alert on Reverb and eBay for "Fuzzhugger" just in case one pops up. if you have one laying around...
8. Stomping Stones Virus. i just got this as a ILFSS gift. it's both a remarkably versatile grainy overdrive and a batshit crazy fuzz with octave and ring mod tendencies. i have no idea at all what the circuit's like or where it might derive from, but it's the most interesting fuzz i've seen in ages.
9. Devi Ever White Spider. perhaps Devi's most useable pedal, it's a one-stop shop for shoegaze racket. Kevin used one. that's how i wound up here...i saw a photo of his pedalboard with the WS on, Googled it, and wound up here because Tom had briefly made a authorized version of the WS. i also wound upon the end-stages Devi Ever forum, which was a thing. quite a few things, really, and you never knew which thing on any particular day.
10. 3xfx Fatman. this is another dip into the Rust Bucket, one of the first devices i bought after seeing it on ILF. it's been stored for years because i remembered it as being terribly noisy, but it really isn't. goes nicely between the D+ and TB in terms of gain with a smoother quality than either. and it has a tone control. all fuzzes should have a tone control because so many are essentially high pass filters. this one is unusual in that rather than the standard army green finish it has a royal blue enclosure which is much nicer to look at.
i don't care for a lot of the popular options. i've never gotten along with Muffs, Rats are too noisy, and Fuzz Faces don't excite me. i'm selling my Blues Driver, MK II Bender, Catalinbread germanium Fuzzrite and Katzenkönig, and W&C Tall Font Russian. and sputtery voltage starving and oscillation don't work for me. if you arrange this list in gain order i think it makes a straight line from quiet to insane.
i still miss my pair of Marshall Guv'nor II pedals. they sounded great on their own, were perfect oscillators in a feedback loop, were built like tiny tanks, and when one was run into another with the gain matched the result was this amazing dynamically compressed sound that sustained for weeks (i got that idea after reading that Bob Mould used to chain Distortion+ pedals in the studio with Hüsker Dü. it sure sounds like he's doing that on Zen Arcade.) i should get another. IIRC some were built in Taiwan and or Korea and later ones in India; the India box i had sounded noticeably less good.
in no particular order:
1. MXR Distortion+. oh yes it is.
2. Tone Bender MK III. CMC Effects clone. a bit more rambunctious than my old Tone Reaper.
3. Buzzaround. CMC Effects. he altered the circuit by adding a master volume knob, which allows you to draw out additional gain combinations that were too quiet with the standard circuit. i love this thing to bits. it's better than the Sound Shank i used to have.
4. Fuzzhugger Algal Bloom. Tom made a small-box version for me. it was stored for ages...when i did the 17-item Great Fuzz Shootout (for five available single-sized slots) it came back. it's almost impossible to make it sound ugly, even when you push the controls to the extremes. you don't hear about them much nowadays, but you should. to use that over-used term, it's a really musical fuzz.
5. Fuzzhugger 3-knob Great Wall. This is the only GW exactly like this in existence. i looked it up: Tom built two small-box 3-knob GWs in single-width enclosures painted by Ben Nerison with different controls on each, so as far as i know this is the only one ever made. i really should have him make me a backup, because it's literally irreplaceable and it's one of the two cornerstones of my dirt sound along with the D+. one is least gainy, one is most gainy, and the others fill the space between.
6. Tone Machine. Danelectro 3699. sick sick SICK. too crazy for my board, but too great to sell. i don't even use the octave switch because it's already in Daft City without it.
7. Fuzzhugger Velcroar. i have a big-box Velcroscillator, but it's not quite the same as the tiny one i sold like a fool. with the Roar all the way left it sounded just like Rust Never Sleeps. all you need is a good octave divider. i have a standing alert on Reverb and eBay for "Fuzzhugger" just in case one pops up. if you have one laying around...
8. Stomping Stones Virus. i just got this as a ILFSS gift. it's both a remarkably versatile grainy overdrive and a batshit crazy fuzz with octave and ring mod tendencies. i have no idea at all what the circuit's like or where it might derive from, but it's the most interesting fuzz i've seen in ages.
9. Devi Ever White Spider. perhaps Devi's most useable pedal, it's a one-stop shop for shoegaze racket. Kevin used one. that's how i wound up here...i saw a photo of his pedalboard with the WS on, Googled it, and wound up here because Tom had briefly made a authorized version of the WS. i also wound upon the end-stages Devi Ever forum, which was a thing. quite a few things, really, and you never knew which thing on any particular day.
10. 3xfx Fatman. this is another dip into the Rust Bucket, one of the first devices i bought after seeing it on ILF. it's been stored for years because i remembered it as being terribly noisy, but it really isn't. goes nicely between the D+ and TB in terms of gain with a smoother quality than either. and it has a tone control. all fuzzes should have a tone control because so many are essentially high pass filters. this one is unusual in that rather than the standard army green finish it has a royal blue enclosure which is much nicer to look at.
i don't care for a lot of the popular options. i've never gotten along with Muffs, Rats are too noisy, and Fuzz Faces don't excite me. i'm selling my Blues Driver, MK II Bender, Catalinbread germanium Fuzzrite and Katzenkönig, and W&C Tall Font Russian. and sputtery voltage starving and oscillation don't work for me. if you arrange this list in gain order i think it makes a straight line from quiet to insane.
i still miss my pair of Marshall Guv'nor II pedals. they sounded great on their own, were perfect oscillators in a feedback loop, were built like tiny tanks, and when one was run into another with the gain matched the result was this amazing dynamically compressed sound that sustained for weeks (i got that idea after reading that Bob Mould used to chain Distortion+ pedals in the studio with Hüsker Dü. it sure sounds like he's doing that on Zen Arcade.) i should get another. IIRC some were built in Taiwan and or Korea and later ones in India; the India box i had sounded noticeably less good.