Cooking Up a Fuzz Of My Own

[Mad-Mike]

Well, joined a "90's cover band" at the start of the year and found a hole in my distortion sound. For the longest time, I've used more of a late 70's/early 80's Van-Halen sort of tone, but here, that only works for so much before I need some nice walls-o-mud and some raspy, ratty, garage-rock goodness........and I sold my Fuzz Factory years ago, and never liked the tone THAT much anyway after awhile, so I decided to take my first dip into the world of DIY pedals....and breadboarded quite a nifty mess together, only started this on Saturday and I'm already so far along I'm trying not to let myself prematurely put it in a box and put it on my board.

So here's a clip of the 5 transistor Fuzz I cooked up using the Jaguar and Bass VI. Let's just say there's a lot of "Biasing" going on between the transistors to alter the tone.



A big part of this pedal is to make the "glitch stuff" useable too for when I'm working outside the context of the band. Have some crazy ideas using the fuzz.

[Fran]

What tunes you covering with the 90's band Mike?

I'd have thought you'd get away with cascading an overdrive into a Big Muff for the more messy tones. I never got on with complex Fuzz pedals beyond experimentation at home, same with Feedback Loopers. They're too unpredictable to work into a band situation.
I admire what Matt Bellamy does with a Kaoss Pad, but as a device, they are more accurate than glitching pedals, in my opinion.