Finally bumping the thread with my impressions of the tourbox fuzzes, and my humble apologies to John and the rest of the folks on the box for taking so damn long to do it. Life has been dealing me dirty for the last year in a succession of blows I never would have expected, and I freely admit I am way off my game. In fact, I'm worried my heart just isn't in it anymore, but I can say unequivocally that the time I spent with the tourbox was pure fuzzy joy and sorely needed at the time. I have been swamped since hitting bottom earlier this summer though, and scrambling to catch up with too many loose ends that I've dropped, so organizing and writing this has been way harder than it normally would be for me, not that it even rises to the high standards set by the cogent and helpful remarks, and ass-kicking demos, already shared in this thread. So with that out of the way, I hope the following remarks are useful in some way, if only to convey my gratitude for having had access to these fuzzy nuggets and maybe to echo some of the points made earlier.
OK, without further ado....
Low Volt:
All in all this was a surprise to me - I had listened to early demos and thought it was just a splat machine (not that there's anything wrong with that, but I'm pretty well fixed for those).
Turns out this had a metric tonne of range....
Some impressions:
STARVE right, SAT full down, FUZZ low - 10 o'clock or below, Body 11 o'clock = surprise, sizzly, chewy dynamic OD without the necessity of messing with the volume controlon the guitar.
Pinch is pretty subtle.
All knobs at noon = normal, extra normal.
All of the above was beyond my initial pre-conceptions regarding this one, and very welcome.
SAT & FUZZ 2 o'clock, BODY all the way up = singing lead tone with that great feeling of lift you normally need a cranked amp for. Killer app right there.
It ate up a treble boost w/ the FUZZ and SAT down a bit - sharp, articulate.
And this all before you get to the splat, which is, well, there in all its varied glory. I think I had written this off as a softer-edged, mushier Bye Bias (cruel prejudice, and probably not even warranted by any circuit similarities), but I was wrong - I think those two could easily co-exist and complement each other in the same setup.
Pendulum:
First impression - tremendous interactivity with the controls. I had gone in a little concerned based on demos I'd heard that the Pendulum wouldn't really get as crazy as I wanted it to, but I definitely found some great sweet spots where I had it speaking in tongues. Some background: I was a late starter with oscillating fuzzes because I found a lot of the early ones I tried to just sound pinched and nasal most of the time and the oscillation wasn't what I wanted - just loud whoops without a lot of movement. Later I got a LAL 88 that began my conversion and I was fully ready for the 3MS/4MS Noise Swash and the Touell Skarn Strakal Brulu when they came into my life. So I've come to expect lots of movement and variation in the oscfuzzes I keep. Still later, I learned the trick with some of these to ride the edge of oscillation for some great vocal tones. Well, I can happily say the Pendulum holds its own with my big boy howlers, and has the capacity to get subtle without falling into the pinched nasal trap, plus I just straight up appreciated the non-oscillating mode as a fully satisfying fuzz on its own.
Loved the crazy range of tones you could pull with the QUENCY knob while oscillating.
FREE has huge range and usefulness both in oscillating and non-oscillating modes.
FREE and QUENCY really work together in oscillating mode, but VOLUME and TWEAK are also highly influential, which I didn't expect at first, and of course gate is super effective in osc modes.
Kay:
So, the Kay circuit had become a little bit of a problem for me well before this tourbox - I had acquired a couple of clones of the fuzz circuit and was really underwhelmed - they felt like anemic Super Fuzzes without the extended highs and lows and raw aggression that make that circuit work for me when I want the fuzz wall. I had sort of come to the conclusion that the special sauce I was hearing from the OGs on recordings, beyond whatever studio processing, was flowing more from the wah circuit or at least from the combination of the wah and fuzz together and so I had largely moved on to other fuzzy pastures before the Kay came up on the list for this tourbox. Not that the brilliant 1/2 gain switch on John's Super Fuzz and its implications for the possible appeal of a lower gain SF variant escaped my notice mind you....
Anyway - the BA Kay well exemplifies what I see as the core BA ethos - take classic circuits/tones, pretty much nail them, and then tack on extra range that leads you to new places, throw in a coupla problem-solving tweaks, make sure the front of your amp will be well pummeled, and still come in without making the user (well this user anyway) feel like the control scheme is cluttered or inexplicable.
So how'd it sound? Well, the nasal thing is in there - it's part and parcel of this octave circuit from what I can gather. But the fat switch comes to the rescue - I found flicking it down ideal for cutting the nasal edge on octave settings and wish every Kay fuzz variant had that one simple tweak.
I much preferred the diode switch up (diodes in?) with the octave switch up, especially if I wasn't cranking the gain (even though it does seem to cut a lot of bass) - I found the tone pretty dull elsewise.
But when playing with the fat up/octave up, flipping the diode down (out?) really helped "integrate the octave tone with the fuzz more which was a cool tone.
Also, although I wouldn't normally think about hitting an octave-up circuit with a treble boost, this turned out to sound great with the Kay - nudging it a little closer towards the Super Fuzz.
As with all BA fuzzes, I always take some time to twist and flip in search of tones that aren't normally part of the core circuit's brief - in this case I found a rad sizzly tone for lofi intros or even better, doubling with a fuller sounding dirt tone - fuzz full up, oct up, tone full down, fat down, diode up - it was totally counter-intuitive, but it turned my mind from thinking I'd just stick with my BA Super to thinking I'd be putting the Kay on my short list to eventually replace my well-loved Boss Xtortion.
Last but not least, the
Fuzz Rite.
I'll admit I've always had a soft-spot for Fuzzrites (and Maestro FZ1s and Companions and such) because I love that raw, protean garage rock thing. But as I continued along my fuzzy journey, I got more and more distracted by fuzzes that were closer to the fuzzstortion end of the continuum -- big muffs and buzzarounds and even MKII tonebenders, including a lot of the rarer circuits BA has done over the years . I had a good time and I don't regret a minute of that journey, but after getting into a protracted period of corksniffing MKI tonebenders I started thinking maybe I had been away from home long enough, so In ordered a custom Maestro Eff Zee Wan from John, and *poof* most of my fuzz GAS died right there. Still, I did make room for a few more - including a fantastic Dot I just couldn't say no to, but I've mostly stayed happily in my protofuzz daze. So, while a Fuzz Rite might have seemed a bit prosaic to some of the folks scanning the BA lineup and handicapping tourbox inclusions, I was keyed in on the Fuzz Rite right from the start. And did I set myself for overhype disappointment? Hell naw - straight from the first line of my scribbled notes as I first began what became a three-hour fuzzrite-induced timeloss event: "TEXT switch & knob give so! much! goodness!" Pretty articulate, yeah? More: "Loved how nasty it got w/FUZZ up & TEXT switch in middle - great dynamics!" "TEXT right and FUZZ full up was beefy! (and noisy!)" I was definitely in my exclamation feels, lol....
An additional note: "pretty nice w/treble boost - overall, again, dynamics!!!!"
I know, I know - beefy is not a word that usually gets associated with fuzzrites, and I've had words about that with doubters on other boards (re: the Dot, specifically). Maybe I'm caught up in relativity here, but I do feel like John has packed a little bit of beef in there at certain settings. Not pointing fingers, but I have to periodically remind myself that the standard fuzzrite's "gain" control isn't controlling gain, but fading between one- and two-transistor gain-stages, with lots of o-o-p chewiness in the central mix zone - but basically, a lot of the common conception of the fuzz rite seems to be a result of the "crank it and wail" approach. As I'm sure most of the savants in a thread like this will appreciate, there is actually a fair bit of range in the circuit, and while it ain't ever gonna be a BMP or even a fuzz face, it'll get into some areas that approach fuzz facery at times, and it shares the sensitivity to guitar volume control manipulation found in the fuzz face (as does the Bosstone - another circuit that can range from reedy to somewhat beefier or even fuzzstortionesque depending on how it's tuned and dialed in on the knobs). Of course, the roll-back is a hell of a lot spittier and more artifact-laden in a fuzzrite, but I find it useful for less intense passages. One of the things I loved about the Dot was that it was easy to set up a tone that was essentially clean when I fingerpicked arpeggios and then roared into full fuzz glory when I smashed the strings with my full hand - the Fuzz Rite does that trick perfectly. I definitely appreciated lg's comments about the comparison between this build and OGs - I got to compare John's Bosstone take to an OG of Chank's and got it close enough to stump all but the golden-eared cable swapper. Yep, check - another BA classic that bottles the OG essence and lets you take it one step beyond.
Although, the Kay also worked really well. 
The setting I used in that last video is one of my favorites. Love the Pendulum. 
I pretty much loved every setting on this pedal.
