Keeley Electronics Fuzz Head

Fuzzes were never truly my thing. There are a few times that I use them, but it's mostly for that old school 70s music or some sort of avant-garde/experimental industrial kind of sound. I never found a big use for them when it came to my normal style of music. However, when I go to grab a fuzz pedal, I normally reach for this one as it's one of my favorite sounding fuzz pedals out there. It takes the standard fuzz pedal and adds an almost modern twist to it to help give you some of that cool overdrive sound. Very trick. You have two knobs and a switch to help shape the way you want this thing to sound.

UTILIZATION

The pedal is housed in an extremely sturdy enclosure. This thing is not going to break, period. I could throw thing down on the ground with all my might, and it'll only get scratched. These things are simply built to last, just like all of Keeley's pedals. The cool thing is that this is a true bypass pedal. That means you don't have to worry about nasty FET buffers or tone sucking occurring in your tone. Once this is off, it's completely out of the signal path. I never read any of Keeley's manuals, so I can't say how well written they are, but this really doesn't need a manual because it's so simple to use.

SOUND QUALITY

The fuzz on this sounds great. You have that old school, organic germanium style tone that is really ripping. You can get that famous Hendrix sounding fuzz without any issues at all. However, that's not all. You also have the ability to use it like a booster/tubescreamer, and that's what I really love about this pedal. I like using this on my Mark IV and boosting the R2 channel. It gives it some extra depth and helps make the thing seem more alive. I'm normally not a fan of the standard R2 channel, but this brings some real life and depth to it. The way to switch between these two different modes is to simply use the toggle switch on the front of this. That switches between the different diodes.

OVERALL OPINION

This is probably my favorite fuzz pedal because it's A) small B) easy to use and C) very versatile for what it is. Since I'm not a huge fuzz user, something like this is a huge plus as I can get both tubescreamer and fuzz sounds with just the flick of a switch. I recommend buying these used as Keeley can be a touch expensive at times, but his quality of work is worth it.

Pedal overdrive / fuzz analog using germanium and silicon.

1 input, 1 output, 1 x PSU, 1 Fuzz knob (gain), a Head knob (volume), a switch Si / Ge (silicon / germanium).

Simple but complete, however a big "Boo" in the absence of external knob tone, it is indeed inside the pedal.

As against the gain may, in addition to the external knob, be set inside to really refine the saturation level.

And finally, best of all, the pedal is easily customizable by changing (a socket has been provided for) resistance.

UTILIZATION

So there's much to find the words to look for. The range of her is so wide and so many combinations that just requires a lot of trial and error.

Fortunately the record is fairly clear and fairly well describes the different elements to change.

In fact the pedal comes with 3 resistors (in addition to the pre-installed) to modify the rates low. We will thus treeble a fuzz-booster to a rather pronounced. But on request Keeley send you 2 more for even more bass (the pedal when I bought these two resistors were provided in addition to three others).

For my part I finally opted for the 6 most slobbery.

on the other hand as stated above, the tone control is done in-house but, as we shall see later, no need to touch it after the pedal is so responsive to the guitar.

I put 9 because the use is complex at first but this is the value of this pedal.

SOUND QUALITY

Bon ben say that except that saturation is the best I've tried.

The sound is very warm (thank you germanium) but also the reactivity is exemplary for a fuzz pedal. In fact it is controlled primarily through the knobs of the guitar.

We lower the volume of pickups and go for small arpeggios slightly crunchy. You push the volume and there is Hello Mr. Clapton. Truly impressive.

The attack is also very true to the ropes.

By not against large difference between the positions of Si and Ge can be a bit more vintage for it.

Like I said after I took the resistance the richest in the low to cover a wide range of sound.

Warning against by this is not a big muff, even putting all thoroughly accuracy is there. After I play a Fender Hot Rod so trying such a Marshall ...

OVERALL OPINION

I use it for a month, paid € 130 on eBay (it is worth about $ 200 new).

I love its versatility (from clean to metal depending on the amp and settings), appearance (bin so, the greater the mouth).

Saturation is really the best I've had, and I had some (Boss OS2, Marshall DriveMaster, Proco RAT2, Overdrive Moolon, Baja Tech Da Moaf, Vox V830, loadings and integrated Zoom 505 Tonelab SE).

After one should not be afraid to seek the sound you want, but once found ...

In fact I chose to keep only this one and my Moollon (fat side for his vintage).