Using a germanium fuzz to get glassy clean tones on your strat..ala Hendrix, SRV

equalsql

Just chanced upon this old video from Pete Thorn on the subject.
Fascinating stuff and definitely worth a try if you've been chasing those famous tones.

hotpickups

That’s why the Mad Professor Fuzz32 I have in the classifieds here is such a great pedal. Can’t believe it’s still available tbh 

Plus one doesn’t have to worry about buffers or temperatures with that one 

soma1975

They key to it all is how you have your amp set. Got to have a bit of hair on it. 

steer

It actually works - even with the absurdly bonkers Germanium Fuzz Factory clone that I built, which is a pedal probably more suited to the "whoops I broke my amp and now it only makes this weird spluttering squeal" type sound. 

monquixote

Andy Timmons does a similar thing with a Boss Blues Driver although I've never been able to get the same effect.

Dave_Mc

monquixote said:

Andy Timmons does a similar thing with a Boss Blues Driver although I've never been able to get the same effect.

Treble bleed on the guitar volume? I'm pretty sure I've seen a video of him where he mentions the treble bleed as being the secret to rolling back, and they're pretty much standard issue on most Ibanezes I think. You don't really need or even want one with a fuzz face or similar, but with more modern overdrives you usually do (I use a Timmy a similar way).

richman6100

I get that glassy Strat tone with the wonderful Magnetic Effects Black Moon fuzz - a Fuzz Face clone with more versatility - into a fairly clean amp. For more girth I add a Thorpy Gunshot on fairly low gain after the fuzz. Kicking in a Drybell Vibe Machine between the two gets full-on Hendrix sounds. Immense fun. 

Seziertisch

steer said:

It actually works - even with the absurdly bonkers Germanium Fuzz Factory clone that I built, which is a pedal probably more suited to the "whoops I broke my amp and now it only makes this weird spluttering squeal" type sound. 

I recently put together a Strat project with a built in silicon Fuzz Factory and I’m loving it for this reason. The volume control on the guitar offers a world of textures. 

soma1975

By the way it doesn't have to be a germanium fuzz. Silicon fuzz faces do it wonderfully as well, as long as it's not a high gain one. 

Dave_Mc

soma1975 said:

By the way it doesn't have to be a germanium fuzz. Silicon fuzz faces do it wonderfully as well, as long as it's not a high gain one. 

Or even a fuzz face- some of those other vintage circuits more or less do it too, IIRC the Colorsound Overdriver does it too, and so does the Shatterbox and even the Rangemaster if you have some dirt dialled in on the amp too.

MagicPigDetective

I’ve owned various muff type fuzzes but never a fuzz face type and I’ve recently become intrigued.

What pedal is a good entry point into the fuzz face world? All the Dunlop models are a bit confusing. 

Dave_Mc

I thought even the Mooer (silicon, I haven't tried the germanium one) one I had was absolutely fine. There are probably even cheaper versions which may or may not be identical from the likes of Donner etc.

Or take a look on Ebay or Reverb, there are often people handmaking pedals in the UK for very reasonable prices, well under £100 in many instances.

I think the basic difference is that germaniums tend to be warmer/woolier-sounding while silicons tend to be brighter and tighter-sounding, and also a bit higher gain. But hopefully others can help a bit with that. It (presumably) also depends on the gains of the individual transistors in the pedal, too, and how they're matched and biased.

soma1975

MagicPigDetective said:

I’ve owned various muff type fuzzes but never a fuzz face type and I’ve recently become intrigued.

What pedal is a good entry point into the fuzz face world? All the Dunlop models are a bit confusing. 

The big box blue silicon Hendrix fuzz face is in my opinion the best mass produced easily available fuzz face going. Buy used and you'll get your money back if you hate it. 

The caveat I give everyone before trying one is you have to have your rig set for the pedal and not the other way around. Fuzz faces you sort of play like an instrument in their own right. 

Into a sparkly clean amp they can sound like dog shit. 

Lebarque

soma1975 said:

MagicPigDetective said:

I’ve owned various muff type fuzzes but never a fuzz face type and I’ve recently become intrigued.

What pedal is a good entry point into the fuzz face world? All the Dunlop models are a bit confusing. 

The big box blue silicon Hendrix fuzz face is in my opinion the best mass produced easily available fuzz face going. Buy used and you'll get your money back if you hate it. 

The caveat I give everyone before trying one is you have to have your rig set for the pedal and not the other way around. Fuzz faces you sort of play like an instrument in their own right. 

Into a sparkly clean amp they can sound like dog shit. 

This. You want an amp that's starting to break up. Marshalls sound great.

If you run your amp clean, run the fuzzface into a light overdrive. 

If you use a Fender black panel amp, run the fuzzface into a tubescreamer, which adds mids and tames the bass.

ElectricXII

Lebarque said:

soma1975 said:

MagicPigDetective said:

I’ve owned various muff type fuzzes but never a fuzz face type and I’ve recently become intrigued.

What pedal is a good entry point into the fuzz face world? All the Dunlop models are a bit confusing. 

The big box blue silicon Hendrix fuzz face is in my opinion the best mass produced easily available fuzz face going. Buy used and you'll get your money back if you hate it. 

The caveat I give everyone before trying one is you have to have your rig set for the pedal and not the other way around. Fuzz faces you sort of play like an instrument in their own right. 

Into a sparkly clean amp they can sound like dog shit. 

This. You want an amp that's starting to break up. Marshalls sound great.

If you run your amp clean, run the fuzzface into a light overdrive. 

If you use a Fender black panel amp, run the fuzzface into a tubescreamer, which adds mids and tames the bass.

I'm not a strat player, but I use a germanium Fuzz Face Mini, the FFM2 red one, into a low drive Timmy then a Vox AC15 or Marshall Bluesbreaker combo, depending on the size of venue. With a P90 guitar, for example, the FF will go from thick fuzz at 10 on the guitar volume, to a mid-rich overdrive with lots of high end at 8, to clean at 6 or 7. I find with my setup, that the pedal only has lots of bass when everything is maxed.

I absolutely love it, and find myself using the other drive on my board (a Hot Cake clone) less and less.

MagicPigDetective

Thanks all.. I have an Orange Rocker 15, I think I will out try a fuzz face with it 

JezWynd

soma1975 said:

By the way it doesn't have to be a germanium fuzz. Silicon fuzz faces do it wonderfully as well, as long as it's not a high gain one. 

The Boss SD-2 does an excellent glassy clean sound using the low gain 'crunch' channel while the high gain side does a muff-like fuzz. I'm surprised it's not more highly regarded.

thecolourbox

Was trying to do this sort of thing the other day without seeing this thread - but i'm using an HX Effects and my Mustang guitar volume knob doesn't seem to do what others do (just goes quieter rather than cleaner). Would I be able to approximate this by using a volume block and expression pedal on the HX or does it need to be the physical pedals and guitar knobs?

Lewy

I love the sound but with my fuzz at least (Roger Mayer Classic rocket) I find it quite a noisy way to achieve a clean sound.  Anyone got any thoughts on what frequencies a turned down fuzz is cutting/boosting with a view to achieving the same effect with EQ (or maybe some sort of multiband compression) applied to an actual clean sound?

Lewy

thecolourbox said:

Was trying to do this sort of thing the other day without seeing this thread - but i'm using an HX Effects and my Mustang guitar volume knob doesn't seem to do what others do (just goes quieter rather than cleaner). Would I be able to approximate this by using a volume block and expression pedal on the HX or does it need to be the physical pedals and guitar knobs?

Assuming it's the same as HX Stomp then there are a couple of things to check....

1) Turn off any gates, including any lurking in the input block
2) Input impedance set to auto
3) You can't have anything before the fuzz block in your signal chain (so you need guitar - cable - HX and then the fuzz needs to be the first block) which is also necessary to achieve this with a real fuzz too.

With these things done, then the Arbitrator fuzz does it pretty well. The big drawback on the HX Stomp is that the impact of the pedal switched off radically drops the rest of your signal due to the impedance. Real fuzzes do that too but nowhere near as dramatically as the Arbitrator in HX Stomp does. There are workarounds but they're fiddly.

thecolourbox

Thanks Lewy that's interesting. I don't think the HX Effects has anything on the input impendence but I'll be sure to check for a gate. I think that's one of the problems my brain has with modelling gear is that there's almost an expectation (probably incorrectly) that things will just work and that annoying things in the real world are fixed in the digital world but I have to remind myself that is not the case really. I've had a few real world fuzz face type things and didn't really get on with them then either, although I did like the MXR classic 108 with the buffer in it.

I'll try a few things as well as the legacy fuzz face that I forgot about just in case, but I think it might just have to be something I do without I think as your previous post, probably better for me to try and do it with some boosting and eq