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Fuzz options for synth madness


radiophonic
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What are people using? Historically I've had the Okto Nojs, which includes a pretty unique fuzz-half. I've no idea what it's based on but it has quite a rich, almost nasal mid range. Unfortunately you can't adjust the gate, so I always needed a second fuzz for routine heaviness. The solution was the ZVex Mastotron, but it's very dry and I always found it benefited from  a blend with the ON when doing the filter-synth thing. Now I have an OC2, so the ON is off the board and I'm looking for alternatives.  Nothing Muff related, needs to have an adjustable gate tonally distinct from the Mastotron.  Unpleasant Surprise is on my radar as an oddball. Fuzzrocious Blast Furnace is a possibility too. Anything else I should be considering. Ideally something I can actually buy...

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https://www.spruceeffects.com/effects/old-growth-fuzz/

https://amptweaker.com/bass-tightfuzz/

The first is for the hi-Z basses, another for lo-Z. I have an old Dean Markley Overlord tube for fun.

I tried quite a few before choosing these. Dark Glass Microtubes B3K, age old Muff, Vemuram, Way Huge Pork Loin etc. but most of them had some issues with adjustments or sound. Dark Glass Duality was very interesting but when I had the money, there was not one around.

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Guest oZZma
On 10/06/2019 at 09:12, radiophonic said:

What are people using? Historically I've had the Okto Nojs, which includes a pretty unique fuzz-half. I've no idea what it's based on but it has quite a rich, almost nasal mid range. Unfortunately you can't adjust the gate, so I always needed a second fuzz for routine heaviness. The solution was the ZVex Mastotron, but it's very dry and I always found it benefited from  a blend with the ON when doing the filter-synth thing. Now I have an OC2, so the ON is off the board and I'm looking for alternatives.  Nothing Muff related, needs to have an adjustable gate tonally distinct from the Mastotron.  Unpleasant Surprise is on my radar as an oddball. Fuzzrocious Blast Furnace is a possibility too. Anything else I should be considering. Ideally something I can actually buy...

Iron Ether Oxide has adjustable gate ("Morph" knob)

Anyways the Fairfield Unpleasant Surprise is a great option,, it's on my radar too! :)

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On 10/06/2019 at 08:12, radiophonic said:

What are people using? Historically I've had the Okto Nojs, which includes a pretty unique fuzz-half. I've no idea what it's based on but it has quite a rich, almost nasal mid range. Unfortunately you can't adjust the gate, so I always needed a second fuzz for routine heaviness. The solution was the ZVex Mastotron, but it's very dry and I always found it benefited from  a blend with the ON when doing the filter-synth thing. Now I have an OC2, so the ON is off the board and I'm looking for alternatives.  Nothing Muff related, needs to have an adjustable gate tonally distinct from the Mastotron.  Unpleasant Surprise is on my radar as an oddball. Fuzzrocious Blast Furnace is a possibility too. Anything else I should be considering. Ideally something I can actually buy...

Run it into a gate pedal such as TC Sentry, that’s what I did. I set up a toneprint which has an instant cutoff. 

Edited by Quatschmacher
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4 minutes ago, Quatschmacher said:

Run it into a gate pedal such as TC Sentry, that’s what I did. I set up a toneprint which has an instant cutoff. 

Does the external gate approach work? I associate gating in a fuzz with starving the cathode, which would add a lot of randomness of the probability of a note being sustained at a given frequency. I'd assumed a noise gate would be too smooth. I don't really have room for a gate pedal anyway, but I'm curious.

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52 minutes ago, radiophonic said:

Does the external gate approach work? I associate gating in a fuzz with starving the cathode, which would add a lot of randomness of the probability of a note being sustained at a given frequency. I'd assumed a noise gate would be too smooth. I don't really have room for a gate pedal anyway, but I'm curious.

Depends what you’re trying to achieve. I was looking for something which cuts the note off dead upon release and avoids bleed when the filter is open at the beginning of a downsweep; the Sentry can do that.

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Guest oZZma
1 minute ago, radiophonic said:

I'd love an Oxide. but I've never had the $$$ when one came up. The Zeus looks very interesting - similar to the Okto Nojs but with control of the gate.  The octave sounds very OC2.

I didn't have all that $$$ to buy it new. I lied in ambush like a vulture and found it used :biggrin:

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1 hour ago, radiophonic said:

I'd love an Oxide. but I've never had the $$$ when one came up. The Zeus looks very interesting - similar to the Okto Nojs but with control of the gate.  The octave sounds very OC2.

Zeus was one of the nicest sounding and best tracking Octavers I have tried. The frustration was that the gain control was via internal trimpot. The fuzz sounded tight and pretty nasty, but not at all settings; due to the nature of the circuit there were some settings which were totally unusable. 

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Tried the Diabolik? Best thing for me by far, over the Oxide, Mastotron, Brown Dog and a few others I’ve tried.

Also a big fan of the Prunes & Custard, which has a similar sound to the Red Ripper.

Edited by dannybuoy
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Amazing options here, I have some of them myself.

An odd one that I combine with my octavers is the CoPilot FX ORBIT which is a gated fuzz with a VCO.
Crazy pedal this is. I got the older 5-knob version after finding out that John Davis (JoJo Mayer's NERVE) had it on his board (many years ago) and watching his video below.

 

 

 

Edited by Byo
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Diabolik and P&C look promising I must say. Both are still actually available too, although not cheap. The P&C is in the same ballpark as I'm expecting the new Source Audio C4 to be, which seems anomalous. I guess they have to ship from NZ though. I spent some time tweaking last night and found that I got better results with the Mastotron if I disengaged the subs and let the OC2 do all the work. Nice results with the 3 voice harmony on the PS6 and now my DD500 is working as a digital octave down and a detune chorus, I don't have to worry about changing modes under stage lighting either.  I've got a couple of months of getting sounds together while we prep the next album and before we resume gigging and I'm hoping the C4 is out soon so I can decide whether to stay on the fuzz path or jump into a digital solution. 

Edited by radiophonic
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  • 2 weeks later...
On 11/06/2019 at 12:49, Jonse said:

Chunk Systems Brown Dog 😉

Having tried a few, this is the fuzz that has stayed with me the longest and probably will never leave my side. It's a real shame Chunk is no more as this was a real gem of a pedal and they're getting very hard to find now.

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The Chunk Systems Brown Dog is excellent but quite rare and not cheap now if you can find one.

The Fairfield Circuitry Unpleasant Suprise is great but although it does do the gated thing excellently, I felt it was more of a "noise" fuzz rather than a synth fuzz, if that makes any sense? I did a video where I used it a bit But didn't have the gate set high. It's here if you're interested:

 

I've had a few mastotrons but always felt they benefitted from a clean blend as I couldn't get them to balance in a mix otherwise.

The little bear bs-1 is a woolly mammoth clone that is pretty cheap but I quite enjoyed for the time I had it. 

The Redwitch Zeus was great as quite tweakable when you consider the trim pots. But as you already have the ON, I don't know if there's any point to having a functionally similar pedal

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