ilovefuzz.com

For anyone who's interested, here's where the name AB-Synth came from...

The circuit design, at one point, layered two fuzz stages from the Algal Bloom (while subtracting the other stages). It changed a bit from there, but that was the start.

The Algal Bloom is very often abbreviated (by myself and users) as AB.
The pedal is sort of like a synthier, higher gain AB...there's a synthier fuzz feel to it plus all the octave down synthy stuff.

In trying to come up with a way to reference both the AB and the synth aspect, it pretty much hit me in the face.
I almost went with A.B. Synth, but decided to write it AB-Synth so it'd flow a bit better.

And that's the story of the name!

Something I didn't know at the time is that there's a synth patch (or program or something) called Absynth.
I wasn't aware of it, and in all this time, I haven't had a single person ask about or mention that synth patch/program...and I don't see how anyone could confuse the two.

The reason I'm addressing this: someone recently made a thread and poll on Harmony-Central asking which they preferred, the AB-Synth or the Fuzz Factory (based on two YouTube videos that were posted and/or personal experience).

(Like I've said before, the AB-Synth isn't at all supposed to be like a Fuzz Factory, since I've never played one and never seen a schematic of one.)

Anyway, the AB-Synth came out on top, leading the manufacturer of the Fuzz Factory to attack the AB-Synth. One of the attacks was that I "appropriated someone else's name" for the pedal. Which is certainly not the case...and which those familiar with the pedal and its name immediately pointed out.

I couldn't care less about someone hurling silly attacks at me, but I do want to be absolutely clear on where the name came from.