Analog Man SunFace NKT 275 with Sun Dial

Being a hand-made pedal the Sun Face comes with a lot of cool boutique options. Unfortunately I bought mine used, so while I'm sure I have the "Sun Dial" (which controls bias and compensates for temperature differences) and the NKT 275 (vintage correct germanium transistors), I'm still not sure if mine is considered "high gain" or not. Keep that in mind as you read, because my main complaint about this pedal is that the gain is a little higher than I'd like, and that may be because there's a chance I've got a special ordered high gain pedal and don't realize it.

This is a "clone" of a 1960s Fuzz Face. I've never played a real vintage Fuzz Face. I've played the reissue Fuzz Face and don't think it sounds good. This pedal sounds a lot better than that.

Three knobs - volume and fuzz, and then the optional bias knob. True bypass foot switch. No power jack. I think you can special order one with a jack for a power adapter, but it's going to sound better with batteries anyway.

UTILIZATION

This is not the easiest pedal in the world to use. It does give you two really great sounds, a kind of treble-boosted sparkly sound with the Fuzz (or your guitar's volume) down and a freaked-out psychedelic sound when the Fuzz is all the way up. The difficulty is that it can sometimes be hard to control which is which. In some ways that can be good -- it has personality and it responds to subtle shifts in playing dynamics, sometimes, by completely switching gears. But I never feel like this pedal is really under my control.

Also, the two sounds it makes don't have a lot of internal variation, if you know what I mean. It's not like you can transition smoothly between or within each gear.

SOUND QUALITY

Two good sounds, which I've been describing, but there's not, like, a lot of subtle shades of sonic change between them.

Also, and this might not bother most people, the sound coming out of the pedal has no really clear relation to the sound of your guitar. With the guitar's volume and the fuzz knob all the way up playing hard or soft gives you exactly the same sound. Even turning your tone knob down doesn't really change the sound!

I'm comparing this to my other Fuzz Face style pedal, the Fulltone '69, which has a lot less gain and less treble-boosty-ness, but which really lets the guitar's own personality shine through, and covers less sonic territory, but lets you find a lot of different flavors and intensities of fuzz within that more narrow range.

Again, this is not a bad sounding pedal AT ALL! But it pretty much blots out the personality of your guitar or your playing when it's on. Some will not mind this because it gives you such a cool sparkle-growl of a fuzz tone, but some people want to have more of the power in their hands, and I guess I'm one of the latter.

OVERALL OPINION

A couple things I haven't yet mentioned. The pedal looks really cool and seems to be built really well. There is no LED, which is pretty annoying, but I believe what Analog Man says about the LED messing up the tone.

The LED thing makes me not want to use the pedal live, but I've used it recording a bunch, particularly using it as a booster by turning the guitar's volume down and letting the transistors rev up the tone.

This is not my main fuzz pedal, but I certainly wouldn't want to sell it.