Who's into fuzz peddles around here?

[Nitro Express]

Nothing beats a cranked amp but you just gotta love the buzz saw effect Pete Townsend got when he hit his Univox Supra Fuzz or the creamy fuzz of Jimi Hendrix's Dallas-Arbiter Fuzz Face. Hearing Jimi Page's Tone Bender and the sweet tone that came from it.

I have a special loop on my peddle board for fuzz peddles. I have a good Fuzz Face that I love, a Big Muff Pi, a Double Muff, and a Univox Supra Fuzz. I would love to have a Tone Bender. You have to love germanium transistors and the brutal, freaked out magic they produce!

[Panamark]

Never got into Fuzz pedals. But any forms of distortion are exciting.
The harmonics from a square wave just cant be beat !

[BrownSound1]

I want a Tone Bender as well. I've been on a huge early Led Zep tone kick for about a year or so.

[Nitro Express]

You certainly can't do Eddie Van Halen stuff with a fuzz peddle. They tend to lack deffinition but I love how some fuzz peddles are real animals to control.

If you want a real cool Hendrix vibe for Voodoo Chile run a Fuzz Face through a MXR Phase 90 with it's knob at 12:00. Everyone digs it when I hit that combination. Sometimes I boost it with a DOD 250 overdrive.

[jojo2371]

i own 1 fuzz pedal ,a roger mayer axis pedal ,bought it new for about $80 bucks 15yrs ago ,it still kicks ass !

[Nitro Express]

Yeah, fuzz peddles are either awful sounding pieces of shit or brilliantly wonderful. I had one of those Russian made Big Muff Pi peddles, what a worthless piece of shit. You could get monster power chords and then when you played individual notes you couldn't hear them.

[GAR]

Nobody ever says much about an Octavia, because they're rare.

[Nitro Express]

Dunlop makes a reissue of the Roger Mayer Octiva and it even is in the Star Treck inspired original case. I don't have any idea how it compares to the original. The Dunlop Fuzz Face is a good peddle. I've tried that one.

[GAR]

Originally posted by Nitro Express
Dunlop makes a reissue of the Roger Mayer Octiva and it even is in the Star Treck inspired original case. I don't have any idea how it compares to the original. The Dunlop Fuzz Face is a good peddle. I've tried that one.

I don't think Dunlop makes the Octavia, Roger Mayer is still alive but allows some retired dude from Chicago who now lives in Hawaii to build and sell all those Rocket FX pedals.

The Dunlop Fuzz Face isn't even close to the original which used such coveted silicon-germanium trasistors as AF-127's which are no longer made.

[BrownSound1]

Originally posted by GAR
Nobody ever says much about an Octavia, because they're rare.

All of the years I've been playing, and I've never played through an Octavia. I did find some schematics on some of the "build your own" sites, but I haven't had time to try and build one.

Haven't you built some effects in the past, Gar? Seems like I remember you were looking for some Germanium transistors not too long ago.

[Nitro Express]

I have an original Fuzz Face that's pretty cool. I still think the Dunlop one is a pretty cool peddle, it's still gets the vibe.

[GAR]

Originally posted by BrownSound1
Haven't you built some effects in the past, Gar? Seems like I remember you were looking for some Germanium transistors not too long ago.

Yes, still working on it.. building fuzzes without Germanium yet emulating the saturation curve using other analog solid state devices.

The difficult points in like how the H11 gain parameters of silicon germanium respond in overdrive are very complex to describe let alone design. Dunlop's engineer is Sam McRae, and he's on it.. he tries.

So do it!

[GAR]

.. and when I say I what I mean to say is my team of bunkered stormtrooper scientists who are entasked to create the Fuzz That Shall Not Be Activated.

[Nitro Express]

The new Dunlop Fuzz Face is not as smooth as the old ones and of course some of the old Fuzz Faces were better than others. I read an interview with the guy who was Hendrix's guitar tech for awhile. He said Jimi traveled with a shit load of peddles and wah wah's. He said Jimi was always complaining the Fuzz Face or the Octiva didn't sound right and so he would have to go through what was in the box until Jimmi was happy. He said in many cases, the peddle that finally made Jimi happy was the one he didn't like. Go figure. LOL!

He said Jimmy would put all his wieght on the wah wah or peddles when he used them. Lot's of broken switches.

Yeah germanium is wierd. I can see why the went to silicon because germanium is inconsistant. It makes that cool smooth fucked up sound but for practical purposes they weren't the best transistors. The tone on my original Fuzz Face sometimes shifts gears. I check my cables and the battery but that not the problem then the original tone comes back. It kind of floats around. What the fuck, it's a fuzz peddle. LOL! If I wanted consistency I would play through a POD.

[jojo2371]

lol nitro i read that story too! eric barrett was jimi's tech ,that was funny as shit the way he said eventually after turning down every fuzz,eric would just hook up the original again and jimi would say "thats the one ! thats the way a fuzz should sound!" lmfao

[GAR]

THAT story is classic and it is very true that germanium transistors are not very temperature tolerant: the gain parameters can float based on input voltage and temperature coefficient, and it may very well be that by the time Eric changed the first again after the seventh wah or fuzz face, chances are for these reasons the sound was different than after they dumped the pedals out from the cooler temperature of a luggage trunk or roadcase.

We laugh at the "psycho-acoustics" (what we THINK we hear, what Jimi THOUGHT he didn't hear the first time in the chain of pedals) but in actuality, the illusion of psychoacoustics on the ear of the listener is not so prominent as compared to the bad temperature coeffecient on germanium based parts.

Which is why I couldn't use them in production, even if I wanted to - due to the inconsistent gain state in different ranges of temperature - if I want to retain a consistent sound, pedal after pedal, night after night and user after user.

[Nitro Express]

My music room is in the upper story of my barn. I live in Jackson Hole, Wyoming and it gets cold where my peddles and amps are if I have the furnace turned down. So maybe that's the problem with my Fuzz Face, it's going from being cold to warm and in the summer it gets hot up there. I never thought about tempurature changes. It doesn't seem to be a problem with my guitars.

[Nitro Express]

There's a trick I use with my Fuzz Face sometimes. If have it in an isolation loop with a wah wah peddle but then I switch into my MXR Phase 90 witch is set around 12:00. I only use the Phase 90 if I want kind of a Univibe thing going on. It workds pretty good for that. But then I run into a DOD 250 preamp with the gain pegged on full and then to the amp. It kind of compresses the sound of the Fuzz Face without losing any of the characteristics. It also tightens up the deffinition but you still get the tone. Great for songs like "Machine Gun". I tottaly have my peddle board set up to where I can go from classic rock to more of a driven EVH tone to Jimi's world. I'm amazed at how versitile the Phase 90 is. Add a little color and flavor to Van Halen stuff or use it to get that psycodelic rotating speaker Uni Vibe thing going. What I love about the Fuzz Face is I can go from this real smooth classy EVH type of sound to fucking Voodoo Chile by kicking in the Fuzz Face. The fucking amp just goes bezerk and becomes a whole new animal. It's a fun peddle.

[GAR]

I can see that working for you; the DOD250 uses diode-clipping.. it's a diode-based distortion and works well by squashing out the somewhat-squarewave wave form to be less rounded in shape after the Fuzz Face.

I'd love to develop a Uni-Vibe type box. I don't think the Dunlop version quite nails it, it's not that warm and I feel signal loss when I hear it so I never got one.

[BrownSound1]

The old Rockman headphone amps used LEDs (light emitting diodes) for their distortion.

[Nitro Express]

I've tried all the famouse distortion peddles like the Boss DS-1, and the Ibanez Tube Screamer and they certainly are good peddles but color the sound too much. Then I stumbled onto the DOD 250 and it is what I was looking for. It's a cheap ass peddle that is built like a tank.

I later read that Yngwie Malmsteen swears by them. He's getting a nice creamy tone without having to murder his amps.

The DOD 250 works well with every guitar I have. It likes humbuckers and it like single coils. If I had to keep just one peddle out of my peddle board it would be the DOD 250.

Didn't Marshall build diode clipping into some of their amps? I know purists were complaining about that but shit, if people are pushing the amp with diodes in a peddle why not build it in to the amp?

[Nitro Express]

Here's what I use to sound like Jimi on the Live at Woodstock CD. Dallas-Arbiter Fuzz Face+EVH signature Phase 90 (in script mode) with the knob at 12:00+DOD 250.

Them three peddles in the above sequence is the shit! I kick the DOD 250 in and out when needed but leave it on and fucking rip into Voodoo Child.

I have found this setup works the best with a non-master volume amp.

[BrownSound1]

For some reason I'm thinking some of Marshall's more recent amps used op-amps for distortion...I could be smoking crack on that one though. I'm sure GAR would know for sure.