The Steel Guitar Forum

Which Fuzz Pedal produces the most fuzz with high/low overtones? Jordan makes the original Fuzztone and also the same in a pedal. Voodoo Lab Boss Tone is another possibility? Another, Electro Harmonix Satisfaction. Fuzz is not a common pedal among traditional country musicians, but I'm trying to narrow down a fuzz for experimenting with background violin effect for slow country tunes. I had an original Bosstone in the 70's and combined with extra reverb and playing unison notes could get violin similarities. Cello tones would be good too. Some fuzz pedals sound better with 6 string single coil pickups. The humbucker steel guitar pickups would likely change the characteristics of a fuzz pedal. So, are there any preferences, likes, dislikes in fuzz pedals with steel?

some good discussion here https://bb.steelguitarforum.com/viewtopic.php?t=390711

My favorite fuzz with steel is the Occvlt Pedals Fuzzvenger. I have a telonics x12 and it works great with that.

I'm new to fuzz and picked this up.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LdIW5MTMFWU

Lots of control, with active eq. I don't have much to compare it to but its always there when turned on.

I appreciate all of the input. Still shopping and looking at videos.

Fuzz boxes are real personal. And extremely guitar and technique dependent. I never know what I'm gonna like until I play them. There are a lot of different approaches to fuzz circuits, and they all have their plusses and minuses.

On that thread Colin linked - https://bb.steelguitarforum.com/viewtopic.php?t=390711 - I thought that Jay Fagerlie's 3 fuzz demos give a pretty good idea of the range of 3 of the common fuzz designs in 1, 2, and 3-transistor circuits. As you can hear, each sounds quite different, and I think very good. Jay is a steel player so he's obviously given some thought about how to tame these for steel, although these demos are with a Tele.

There are yet more approaches, like the Mosrite FuzzRITE, which was used on In A Gadda Da Vida by Iron Butterfly, as well as the original fuzz circuits, the Maestro FZ-1 or FZ-1a.

I mostly use an original circa '65 Maestro FZ-1 Fuzz (the Satisfaction fuzz) and a reissue Triangle Big Muff. The Ram's Head Big Muff reissue is cool too. I have various others - an original Fulltone 69 (Mk I, not Mk II), a Diaz Squareface, a more recent Supro fuzz, and a few others I can barely remember. One of these days, I need to clean house. Each of the fuzzes I own sound significantly different from each other. I really like the Fulltone 69, but it requires a separate reverse polarity power supply and that is a bit of a PITA.

As stated at the outset, I find fuzzes to be very guitar dependent. The simpler circuits especially like the FZ-1 and the Fuzz Face interact heavilly with the output impedance of the guitar, so it's pretty hard to say with much certainty what they will sound like with a particular guitar. And especially the germanium transistors tend to be both temperature dependent and also individually variable. This can be tamed to some degree using a buffer, but then the buffer changes the way they sound too.

I ran into the same variable problem when narrowing down an Overdrive pedal. In the 80's I stumbled onto a very wide sweeping and controllable overdrive arrangement using 3 MXR pedals. I loved the crunch I was getting. I could play two note grabs on steel and dial in transparency with crunch. The sequence of pedals was accidental: guitar to Envelope Filter to Micro Amp to Compressor to volume pedal. The transparent crunch was with the Micro Amp and Compressor on. The Envelope was optional for a touch of synth effect. My original Micro Amp and Compressor eventually died. I experimented with a few modern stand-alone Overdrive pedals since then and couldn't get that "gradual wide sweep" and compressed transparent crunch. It was either too much or not enough overdrive. I finally decided to buy a reissue MXR Compressor and MXR Micro Amp. Now I'm happily getting what I had in the 80's. My Envelope Filter is original issue and still works great. I added a 9v adapter input jack to it instead of messing with battery replacement. I may have to discontinue pursuing the fuzz project. I can find many videos of fuzz demos, but they are all 6-string guitar and bass videos revolving around lead and rhythm. A 12-string steel pickup creates another variable and would require trying too many fuzz brands and models. It's probably not worth the time and money to add an occasional background violin sound for very few songs with the band.

A new EHX pedal called the Satisfaction Plus crossed my feed yesterday. Pre-release, I think. The name tells you a lot (pretty much the opposite of singing violin tone) but the sound samples I heard impressed me re: the range from snarly rasp to much more saturated tone. 4 knobs and one switch.....it covers a good bit of range. It has my interest.

It’s the only fuzz I’ve ever had or used but the Earthquaker Devices Hoof has been a lot of fun and sounds fantastic. The shift knob helps a ton with steel. It’s not super pricey either