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badgerific « Great sound but not a traditional fuzz. »
Published on 04/13/11 at 11:05This is a fuzz stompbox made by Zvex. It has 1/4" input and output jacks and can be used with a 9V battery or a standard boss style power adaptor. It's true bypass and has five controls, which are: Volume, Drive, Stab (stability), Comp (compression) and Gate.
UTILIZATION
This pedal is simple to set up, just plug your amp and guitar in and put a battery inside and you're ready to roll. The five controls on this pedal are very interactive and can react strangely in certain settings and produce feedback. It can be quite difficult to get a traditional fuzz tone out of this pedal I find, but then again if you want a traditional fuzz sound then you're probably not going to be buying a fuzz factory.
One thing I dislike about the utilization of this pedal is that due to the small enclosure and high amount of knobs it's quite easy to knock your settings when engaging the bypass footswitch.
SOUND QUALITY
I really love the sound of this pedal the germanium transistors sound amazing. The range of sounds you can get out of this pedal are ridiculous. My personal favorite is a heavily gated "velcro-fuzz" sound. Like I mentioned previously in certain settings this pedal can be prone to produce wild feedback and oscillations, I really like this feature of the pedal but a lot of people can be put off by it. I enjoy using it to produce a huge wall of fuzz sound that trails into oscillation. The pitch of the oscillation can be changed by the volume and tone controls on some guitars I found so there is possibility for new creative aspects which aren't available with other traditional fuzz boxes.
OVERALL OPINION
Overall I think this is a great pedal but I can't justify the price of owning a real one and despite building more than five clones I haven't managed to get the right sound yet. I think if you're considering this pedal you should try it before you buy it as it isn't for everyone.
UTILIZATION
This pedal is simple to set up, just plug your amp and guitar in and put a battery inside and you're ready to roll. The five controls on this pedal are very interactive and can react strangely in certain settings and produce feedback. It can be quite difficult to get a traditional fuzz tone out of this pedal I find, but then again if you want a traditional fuzz sound then you're probably not going to be buying a fuzz factory.
One thing I dislike about the utilization of this pedal is that due to the small enclosure and high amount of knobs it's quite easy to knock your settings when engaging the bypass footswitch.
SOUND QUALITY
I really love the sound of this pedal the germanium transistors sound amazing. The range of sounds you can get out of this pedal are ridiculous. My personal favorite is a heavily gated "velcro-fuzz" sound. Like I mentioned previously in certain settings this pedal can be prone to produce wild feedback and oscillations, I really like this feature of the pedal but a lot of people can be put off by it. I enjoy using it to produce a huge wall of fuzz sound that trails into oscillation. The pitch of the oscillation can be changed by the volume and tone controls on some guitars I found so there is possibility for new creative aspects which aren't available with other traditional fuzz boxes.
OVERALL OPINION
Overall I think this is a great pedal but I can't justify the price of owning a real one and despite building more than five clones I haven't managed to get the right sound yet. I think if you're considering this pedal you should try it before you buy it as it isn't for everyone.