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Hatsubai « Very organic sounding fuzz »
Published on 11/26/11 at 18:53Fuzzes 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.
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.