ilovefuzz.com

plz educate me.

guitar to fuzz to reverb to amp, fuzz sounds great by itself, reverb sounds great by itself, enable them both and a bunch of high end gets cranked, totally changes the sound of the fuzz. anybody know why some do that and others don't? has to be something common in structure, at least i'd guess, since every mr. black reverb does that (which is a bummer) but EQDs for example don't.

i'm tired and sad that my tall font doesn't like my supermoon and / or eterna. especially sad about the supermoon.
she's fine w/ levitation and transmisser but they aren't exactly what i want in this rig...

Probably not the sort of answer you're looking for, but does yer amp have loop you could try running your reverb through? Can make a world of difference when using dirt imo, but you'd have to put up with the extra cables and what not...

it does, i'll try that next, good point. (i never use those.)

Is the amp clean? Try going fuzz > verb > dirt (amp od or a pedal). If the amp's already dirty, try clean.

I've noticed the same as you when using a pedal verb and muffs/certain fuzz voicings. Amp verb is always good though.

I've wrestled with this as well, I think the more full frequency verbs grab the sizzling hi end of the fuzz and accentuate it. That may be why the EQD verbs do better than the Mr Black.

If you rely on the amp or later-stage dirt to knock harsh treble off of the fuzz, you're probably gonna have a bad time with the hi def reverb that you stick in the middle of that system. Lo fi reverbs like a Fender 6G15 or the murky Z-line pan in an RE-201 don't care so much, and may do the smoothing for you.

Some modeler and WDW rack guys won't put their high def reverbs in the mix until after a speaker emulator or an actual mic on a speaker. More like the studio engineer applying it. But that does foreclose pre-dirt reverb options.

I've noticed some delays and verbs will boost the highs a bit or give an overall volume boost. That's a possibility too.

Graphic EQ pedal and cut the sizzle? Put both the reverb and EQ into a feedback looper with a clean blend (or just a looper with a clean blend) so that your original fuzz sizzle gets through, too?

I haven't had this issue but both of the reverbs I have been using have tone kobs. (Supernatural and Digiverb.) I am not sure how Mr. Black reverbs are as far as true bypass or buffered, but sometimes the placement of buffers in the signal chain can keep things under control. There is probably a better solution but just a thought.

verb in the loop sounds great man!

Alternatively, have you tried before and after? Some verbs are just too powerful. The Meris Merc7 has this issue, so you have to turn the mix down, but then you lose the character of the verb. It sucks ass because the Merc7 sounds so fucking good. I've almost got rid of it a few times because it buries my fuzz (I mean wtf right??). So into the loop it goes.

The only thing that sucks about the loop shit is that your fuzz no longer affects the way the verb squashes or opens when you hit it with a fuzz.

I wish I had more of a helpful answer. This is why I have such a love hate thing with reverb in general.

vidret wrote:I far prefer the sound of delays/reverbs in loops but have been running everything out front because of laziness for 3 yrs.

Same here. Lazyness, plus the fact that my old band didn't exacly play the kind of music where the subtle improvement of running delay/verb through the loop survided in a live situation :/

PumpkinPieces wrote:I haven't had this issue but both of the reverbs I have been using have tone kobs. (Supernatural and Digiverb.) I am not sure how Mr. Black reverbs are as far as true bypass or buffered, but sometimes the placement of buffers in the signal chain can keep things under control. There is probably a better solution but just a thought.

Yeah, I had a weird thing with a Raygun (small UK builder) Aurora delay, where certain places in the chain made it sound really harsh, and others it was just right. That was a nice sounding lofi delay, and pretty cheap.

I'd wager some verbs get it while others don't because by and large the builders will be planting some sort of scaling/input limitation in front of the digital reverb engine (different ones have different limits) or fragile analog IC and how you clamp down and then pull it back is often going to be a big fucking deal with some signals (like fuzz) while remaining transparent to the puny paint by numbers crowd (so incompatible stuff sees release in the first place).

The effects loop suggestion is good because decent amplifier designers have that art figured and everything between preamp and power amp is optimal in regards to signal strength (because otherwise fires can be started).

Conversely, attenuation before the verb with a healthy dose of cleanish boost after might dodge the bullet.

..or make it worse, so many factors are at play. Experimentation remains the law of the land.

I prefer reverbs in front of my fuzzes, personally, *because they never seem to sound that great after.

It's common practice in mixing world to low pass verbs sometimes all the way down to 5k (or more commonly 8-10k). It makes the verb sound more natural and also some verbs have a tendency to accentuate the higher frequencies, as does a lot of dirts. Maybe that could help some of you.