Basic Audio Tourbox Demos, Reviews, Etc.

[behndy]

hah!!! DA PLANE! DA PLAAAAAAANEEEEEEEE!!!

........ that's also what it reminds me of. but more Mssr. Fantastique not like...... curing CANCER or anything. dick. "but i made these suits!! that STRETCH!!"

FUCK you.

[Dandolin]

Cee Lo? Dat you?

[behndy]

[Dandolin]

Whew! I'm back after a lousy, fuzzless week. Just spent the better part of this afternoon going over the fuzzes John has shared with me, and I have some more impressions to share.

First up--a fuzz based on the fuzz portion of the old Roland AD-50 Double Beat fuzz-wah.

I've recently become somewhat unhealthily interested in the pre-Boss offerings of the Japanese company that successively changed moniker from Acetone to Roland to Boss. I've now got a couple of Bee Baa clones that I love as Muffternatives, and John's take on the AF-50 fuzz will soon become my newest acquisition and my second of what I'm sure will be many Basic Audio devices.

My take on the AD-50 from the few demos of vintage originals and one notable clone I'd heard on the 'toob was that it offered the girthy sustain of the Big Muff family with a unique attack overload in which the fuzz seemed to be cannibalizing itself and crumbling. Comfortingly, John's take brings plenty of both qualities in spades. What it doesn't bring is a wah, or the dodgy tone selector switch which claimed to bring you square wave, sine or triangle wave fuzz tones. Lying liars from Liarton! The original brings one type of fuzz only, with whatever EQ variations can be squeezed out of a three-way cap selector. Outside that, there is only one mode--thick, syrupy fuzzstortion. Not enough for ya? Well, trust in John. In true fuzz whisperer fashion he gets down to the secret heart of this circuit which underneath that muff party exterior has a cuddly, fuzzy heart. The controls? Volume, Gain and Fat. Max Gain and Fat and you're in the territory of the original. But these controls, in conjunction with your guitar's volume and (yes) tone controls, will bring an insane variety of less saturated but equally righteous goodness to the table.

Where were we? Ah--crumbling fuzzstortion. The crumbling quality is very appealing in that it brings a unique texture and response to your playing but without accompanying gating effects. Far from it--there is so much sustain and such an intense level of harmonics generated that you get that feeling that your notes have air lift under them just as you do on a cranked tube amp. Between the movement on the attack and the shifting textures as you let notes and chords ring out, this is an ideal fuzz wall pedal. In fact, I found myself slowing down and listening to the different things the fuzz did to what I played instead of motorikally slamming the strings. This is also a pedal that invites legato playing because notes bloom with out the need to slam your guitar; yet it doesn't seem excessively tight or compressed. Rather, there's an overall feeling of dynamism. In addition, although the pedal puts out a full-bodied tone with adequate bass response, it is not mid-scooped, and the bass response is firm, not flabby. The primary sense is of a pedal that will travel well in many different genres. It is definitely not, as many popular fuzzstortions of late seem to be, tuned for doom, though. All, in all, with the gain control on the pedal maxed and the "Fat" control dialed in to your particular taste, this is a very likeable and likeably unique fuzzstortion in the 70s tradition dominated by the BMP.

However, once you begin adjusting the controls on your guitar and fuzz, the response characteristics seem far more reminiscent of a Fuzz Face or Tone Bender type fuzz. First of all, those of you who are put off by the idea of a funky, crumbling attack--no problem. Just roll the volume knob back on your guitar a touch and the attack normalizes without loss of the sustain and harmonics. Max the Fat, and roll the Gain back towards 7 pm and the feel of the pedal tightens up a bit, becoming more akin to an old MXR Distortion +. Roll back the volume on your guitar as much as you like--you'll get a great variety of distortion and overdrive shades without any funky ring mod textures. With the Fat maxed and the Gain rolled back, you'll stay in crunch territory throughout the range of your guitar volume knob. Roll the Fat control back, though, and you can clean up to bairly perceptible hair, with plenty of crisp, sparkly Fuzz-Face-esque overdrive textures in between. Are you the type who starts to sweat and get the shakes if your dirt pedal doesn't deliver some OTT strangeitude? That's where starving the pedal comes in--starved you can get as many flavors of ring-moddy clash and clang as your heart desires.

This is a special pedal and it needs a special name. I couldn't deliver on that front. But keep working on it, John--this one needs to be one of the marquee names for Basic Audio.

[Holy Schnikes]

God damn these are some thorough reviews Dandolin!

Still need to get my tourbox thoughts up here, after work tonight or tomorrow, I promise John.

[MEC]

I got the box today and did a quick run through.
I'm really liking the SquareWave + and the Spooky Tooth so far.
Those two seemed best suited for teh dooms so I used them a bit at practice too.
The Spooky Tooth really cut the mix and sounds great with a loud band.
The SquareWave with the toggle in the middle position brings massive volume and great tones as well.

I plan on doing a demo tomorrow.
Since "theactionindex" covered the guitar stuff so well I think I'm going to give it a go with Bass.
If that fails miserably, (I'm not really a Bass player per se) I may do some feedback loop, noise stuffs instead.

[behndy]

mooooooooooooof. WANT. MY. SQUAREWAVEEEEEEEEEER.

sigh. i'm an impatient little GRRL.

[behndy]

'course........ it's only been like 15 days. and he said about 3 weeks.

again. impatient grrL. ME.

[theactionindex]

I may do some feedback loop, noise stuffs instead.

That would be so rad. As soon as I sent the box off I was bummed that I didn't think of using any of the fuzzies in a feedback loop or stacking them with anything else/each other.

'course........ it's only been like 15 days. and he said about 3 weeks.

again. impatient grrL. ME.

I feel your pain Mr. B. Quadrawang. My wait for my Squarewave and Spooky Tooth has just begun.

[behndy]

well, getting giggles out of ILF is making things a BIT better.

but still. i have like 4 pedals incoming that i'm just shooting pubic hair in worry over.

SECHSY WORRY.

[John Lyons]

Dang Daniel. Great review once again, thanks for the detail. Much appreciated.

I plan on doing a demo tomorrow.
Since "theactionindex" covered the guitar stuff so well I think I'm going to give it a go with Bass.
If that fails miserably, (I'm not really a Bass player per se) I may do some feedback loop, noise stuffs instead.
Guitar, Bass or otherwise would be great.
Maybe a little of each even.

[Dandolin]

OK--next on the block--The Wildcat.

This one is JATS.

/thread.







True story--this one made me question my sanity and all that I hold dear about fuzzery when I cracked the back. But only for a second. Don't get me wrong, I'm not a complete naif--I've owned and enjoyed quite a few op-amp fuzzes in my time, and some have had quite an extreme sonic profile--MASF Epilepsy anyone? In fact, many of these op-amp fuzz circuits are among the most pissed-off sounding units in my fuzz bucket. However, based on my experience with the Basic Audio line, I never expected to see a JRC4558 and a back-to-back pair of silicon diodes in this'n. As I think about the range of fuzzes I have played, and about John's M.O. as exhibited in all the fuzz in this mini-tourbox, it makes much more sense. I'm not the guy to tell exactly how John hog-tied and nipple-clamped this circuit topology into sweetly squealing like he has the Wildcat, but I now know to expect this kind of thing--it's very clear that John takes great pleasure in finding ways to make circuits do the unexpected and in delivering fuzz that gets the player to the sonic goal while avoiding the kinks and pitfalls of the "standard" ways of getting there.

So what is the sonic goal here? Well, you can read John's description on the Basic Audio website, and a fine description it is. With my Tele, this fuzz is snotty, angry and cutting, but with long sustain and a terrific degree of variation in gain level and attitude available by adjusting the fuzz knob and the volume and tone controls on the guitar. John invokes the Shin-ei FY6 Super Fuzz, and I do hear a bit of that ring-moddy spit with my Tele, but all and all, with guitar volume and tone maxed, it's more reminiscent of my GGG Shin-ei FY2 Companion clone with the mids mod engaged to take away the extreme EQ scoop. Rolling back the tone knob conjures up a filtered texture that gives a wonderful approximation of a synth when you mute the strings and play staccato. This is a sound I've found in various circuits--Crowther Prunes and Custard, Wolftone Chaos, Culture Jam's Logic Fuzz--but not in a Super Fuzz and not in an op-amp and diode clipper circuit. Maybe I need to torture some of my op-amp fuzzes a little more, and clearly I need to play with the Super Fuzz more.

Plugging in a guitar with humbuckers definitely pushed the Wildcat closer to the Super Fuzz camp--a lot more clash and clang, much more apparent hints of both lower and upper octave, and a lot more bass response overall. Interestingly, I liked the lower gain overdrive tones more with humbuckers too--fat and juicy without sounding flubby. I definitely want to play around with some different kinds of boost in front of this pedal to see what kinds of anarchy reign when the front end is pummeled.

I waited to review this one until I could get in a good session starving it, and was rewarded with the sickest fun yet.

At different levels of starve and settings on the fuzz control I was able to get whistling, oscillating tones; sounds that came on like a clean blend mixed with a frying-eggs, white-noise-heavy fuzz; and velcro/kazoo/trumpet fuzz very much like the Zippy. At one point with the starve and fuzz gain near minimum I was able to go from a clotted, spitty fuzz with soft picking and instantly jump to a version of that tone mixed with a "clean" tone simply by picking harder.



Based on this limited exposure, I know there are even more tones to be had by mixing the starved settings with different types of front end input. This one seems more protean than the Squarewave+ and the AD-50/Double Beat, and harder to nail down because it is so interactive with guitar settings and different settings on the Fuzz control, and because many of those settings introduce drastically differing attack/decay characteristics.

No surprise here--this is another Basic Audio fuzz I'd love to make my own.

Edit--OK, I got off my ass and found my ROG Peppermill and kicked the Wildcat in the tail with it. Fwoar! Full on Super Fuzz mode with the Tele--engage! Also--max starve on the Wildcat, Tele neck pickup with tone all the way back, Peppermill dimed=this amazing envelope phaser with an awesome frequency sweep after every note. I'm sure different boosts would give you different flavors, but this was a helluvan Easter Egg!

[John Lyons]

Hee hee. Op amp nasties are fun. They are just gain amplifiers so no reason they can has fuzz.
The Wildcat has a little clean poking through in the lower gain settings. I have not really explored this
but something run before it would smooth this out and add some cool complexity to those lower
gain sounds. I need to try out some voltage starvin' myself.

[MEC]

Basic Audio Fuzz Party!

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


Thanks John!

[theactionindex]

YES! That was fuckin' awesome!

My favorite is around the halfway point when things start getting reaaaaal weird.