Help me understand types of fuzz pedals

[cnb]

I'll be hunting for a good muff or a swollen pickle (fuzzes really have the best pedal names lol) for sure.

I was never really into the rippy sputtery fuzzes. They hurt my ears!

[benoi31]

Most nowadays fuzz pedals are inspired, or "heavily inspired" (aka clones) of old vintage fuzz.
I just wrote an article about the different types of fuzz you can find:
http://www.coda-effects.com/2015/08/the ... -fuzz.html

It is of course not exhaustive, but it gives you an idea of the different fuzz types you can find, their sound and their main "boutique" clones.

[UglyCasanova]

Nice necrobump, buddy

[xrleroyx]

I'd look at a Shoe Pedals Robert Fuzz. Really smooth, and sounds great. Not a clone of any specific circuit, but you might dig it. I know I do.

[goroth]

Nice necrobump, buddy

[SoaringTortoise]

There are two kinds of fuzzes. Ones that sound good and ones that don't. You get to decide. A delay pedal between the fuzz and the amp always helps to smooth things out a little especially for lead. A cocked wah can help take some of the edge off as, well.

[lost in music]

Hello everybody!
I like the sound of fuzz in a lot of music (The White Stripes come to mind immediately, but also Sleep, Cream, some Black Keys songs, and Queens of the Stone Age) but I've never owned one until recently. I have a Dingotone VFZ pedal, which is a germanium fuzz face style (I suppose that's a good pedigree since it's the style Hendrix used) but no matter how I play with the settings I don't really get the kind of fuzz I like. Is this because of the circuit or am I setting it weirdly? I play a Carvin TL60 with splittable humbuckers and a Xaviere hollowbody with P90s. I have played with the drive and volume settings on the pedal and the guitar volume/tone controls.

There's gotta be an alternate universe with guitars called Javier, but instead of it being a cheapo fender knock-off that needs a set-up right out of the box, it would be like a tennis instructor or masseuse or pool boy who your wife wants to run off with.

[popvulture]

Ha, I didn't realize this was a necro thread until just after I'd decided how I wanted to help/contribute.

Fuck it.

Fuzzes eluded me for a really long time... I'd owned a NYC large-box Muff, a Fulltone Soul Bender and '69 (large boxes as well), so that really had a pretty good range covered. I always liked the sound of muffs, but not really for what I wanted to play... there were usually too heavy/round/saturated. Awesome for a lot of people, ultimately not my bag. As for the SB and the FF, to be honest I just wasn't using them right.

I'd naively dismissed guitar volume knob tweakage as some kind of useless practice—usually when I turned mine down, things just sounded weaker. I never really got the "cleanup" phenomenon that everyone talked about, but the thing was... I just wasn't doing it with fuzz and I didn't understand the concept of impedance. So anyway, yep... that was the key for me, the thing that opened up the door to obsessing over what each one sounded like, and of course spending stupid amounts of money (which continues today). Sometimes you're just an idiot for a while.

There are obviously tons of fuzzes, but I think the best way to get started is to get your hands on and compare some variations of the big three—fuzz faces, tonebenders and muffs. They cover such a large range and each group has loads of variations/nuances of its own. Of course YMMV, but the quick way that I file them in my brain, respectively, is musical/overdrive-oriented, snarly/aggressive, and round/heavy. Within each of these there are going to be plenty of exceptions to the rule, but I find the loose grouping at least convenient for narrowing things down when I'm seeking a sound. Tonebenders and FFs are especially friendly with the volume knob... try turning a bender down to 9, or even just to 9.5 and see how much it changes. That shit blew my mind.

So anyway, lots of ILFers will naturally have a "no shit, Sherlock" reaction to this, but I figured I'd throw it out there for anyone came across this necro thread as a noob and would like some things spelled out.

Also, this video is pretty great for showing some variations in Germanium fuzz circuits: (I almost always prefer Ge over Si, but that's just me)

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VdJWv4emZdY[/youtube]