Quite Shocking Fuzz
Kuato Design is kinda like the imaginary name under which I'm releasing my stuff, Kuato being the reference to the ruler of the underground from the movie we all watched - Total Recall. Open your miiiiind...
This build is the Univox Superfuzz with a blendable octave down. The octave down is provided by the Joe Davisson Shocktave circuit. I tried all sorts of blend circuits but what I liked best in the end is just the Shocktave going into the Superfuzz with gain and volume crancked and Shocktave's Mix knob is my octave down blend actually. Try it, you'll like it guys
I rarely label the knobs when I am building stuff for myself, but the controls are Volume, Tone, Octave Down Blend, Fuzz.
I used genuine OA90 Ge diodes, my voltages are spot on, just like the best sounding Superfuzzes have. I implemented just a couple of mods really, a trimpot in the way of diodes to ground, a trimpot for octaveness, a trimpot for tunning the Q4 and Q5 for the best sound, and substituting the tone 1/tone 2 switch with a pot, which makes it highly versatile.
The enclosure is a custom made one, me and my friend went to a local firm and carried with us a Fulltone 69 pedal and said "We want 5 enclosures just like that!" and we got them. Very sturdy, I was impressed.
The graphics is currently just the sticker, I feel a little embarassed by that but hey, I will do something better once this sticker wears off [who has time with so many builds waiting]...
And, a sound demo
[soundcloud]https://soundcloud.com/earthless/quite-shocking-fuzz-demo[/soundcloud]
I really haven't been overly inspired while recording this demo, but hey...No other pedals used, just some delay here and there, and maybe a flanger for like a couple of seconds. I used my Tele for a minute I think, and then switched to the SG. I played through the pedal and then straight to the Line 6 UX1 interface and the POD Farm with it's Vox AC30 simulation. I found that this is the best simulation of that kind of sound, people are frequently asking me whether my demos are recorded with a mic in the studio...I don't know, there are a lot of ways to do it, but this one works for me, at least to give an overview of the sounds I am getting with my amp.
What I like especially with this pedal is the sound I get on the higher frets, it sounds like a flute damnit! It's crazy, and what's really interesting to me is when you play lines over the entire neck, on the higher frets you get the octave up louder, and on the lower frets the octave down is more pronounced. Pay attention to the tapping part on the sound sample, first there's a lot of octave down, and as I start getting to the higher frets it starts to scream with upper octaveness, fantastic stuff.
Oh, and yeah, all the riffage has been played on one string at the time, so everything you are hearing is made by the fuzz itself, pretty cool right?
Cheers everyone and let me know what ya think!
