Chord-friendly fuzz, Fuzz Factory?

[tremolo3]

Sup,

I'm looking for a fuzz friendly for chords and I think the Big Muff might be my best bet, but I don't want to buy a Big Muff, I'm thinking more in building a Zvex FF, my question is if it's versatile enough to emulate the Big Muff sound when playing chords, because every single video I've seen it's all about bluesy fiddling stuff

BTW, fuzz boxes I've tried and didn't like for chords:

Fender Blender
Dano CF1
Dano French Toast
Bass Fuzz
Turbo Rat cranked (this sounded good, but I need moar)

Any other suggestions are welcomed, budget is ~$100

Thanks in advance!

[GardenoftheDead]

Fuzz Factory does a decent big muff impression on a couple of settings

Edit: OOPS missed that you're gonna build it nvm

[ALLisNOISE]

A Fuzz Factory is fuzz face variant. You can make it sound muffy if you'd want.
If you're building it, you can experiment with different input and output caps to better tune it to your playing style.
Also, since you're building it, you should make the oscillation foot switchable!

[JamesSGBrown]

My problem with the fuzz factory was that you can never really turn the gain down enough to lend chords clarity. They sound 'big' but not 'clear'.

The Mastotron and Fuzzolo sound better from what I've heard.

[frigid midget]

Fuzz Factories are awesome, I'd still have one on my board if it weren't for my Fuzz Godd II, which imp is a slightly improved and more user friendly ff. Come to think of it, the size difference might actually some day make me go back to the ff.

Anyway, as much as I love it, it's finnicky. And though it CAN work for chords or muff-type sounds, if I were to build or buy something and I had a reasonable budget for all the fuzzy options in the world...I wouldn't at all consider a fuzz factory for those kinds of purposes. If you know how to dial it in, it'll do awesome on leads/riffs, but really not so much on 'rhythm'.

Having said that, there's few true big muffs that I like enough to use in a band context. Imo some sort of scoop/middle control is a must, and so is stacking with something tubescreamerish or whatever. The further you get away from the typical whooly muff tone, the better it makes the pedal cut out in a mix. There's a sweet spot somewhere in the middle, and with the tons of boutique variants out there, I'm sure it can be found.

I'll second the mastotron suggestion. Can be dialed in for more 'useable' tones, as well as for apocalyptic fuzz sounds with insane amounts of low end.

[Eivind August]

I'll have to reccomend the Dwarfcraft She Fuzz again. It has great note separation, and sounds awesome with chords! The Fuzzhugger Algal Bloom might be worth a try as well, sounds great for this sorta thing in the demos.

[rfurtkamp]

Something with a blend will give you a TON of options if you want clarity.

For easy to build, commonly available schematics, the venerable Ampeg Scrambler is a fine piece of kit and can go from assist to ring mod hell.

[onyxrhino]

After years of avoiding them, I finally got a fuzz factory recently. I've been playing around with the settings, and yeah, there are a couple that work really well for rhythm and keep chord clarity. I actually like these sounds on it better than most fuzzes. Now, its not the among the best 2-3 fuzzes I've played for chords, but it's in the top 10%, I'd say. I'm actually much less impressed by its oscillation and modulated sounds (which is what I really got it to play with).

[GAS KING]

What does "chord friendly" mean?

Chord clarity?
Doesn't get garbled or overloaded?

[voerking]

my favorite fuzz for clarity in chording (that still sounds sufficiently fuzzy) is a Buzzaround. it's not a very complicated build, either!

[PetZounds]

I really like Turbo Rat with the volume high and distortion low into a Big Muff.
I've found that chords sound pretty great through that.

[peps1]

Build a Big Muff with larger Clipping Caps (around 1.0uF) to stop it sounding to bass flabby when playing chords.

[tremolo3]

Thanks, I'm gonna check the Buzzaround, never heard of that before and it looks simple.

I think I'll just build the FF on a breadboard and see if it's gonna worth the hassle.

Does anybody has a clip/song(?) of chords being played with a FF?

Thanks again.

[TweedBassman]

I've owned several Fuzz Factories and built a nice clone too, they are not what I would call chord friendly. but you may like it. too much crazy gain and notes get lost imo.

big muffs are better but chords get lost in a full band because of the mids scoop. you could build one with a mids knob though.

try a fingerprint. easy to build and sound great with chords. and that's not spammy cuz i'm saying clone it. lol.

[Ro_S]

what types of chords are you asking about? power chords? open chords? ...