A Holy Heavy Metal (Literally) FY-2 Fuzz

Here's a fun one! My buddy Clay over at Rainbow Guitars works metal for fun. He recently brought me a fun enclosure to work with.

Of course this needed to house the gnarliest of all fuzzes, the silicon FY-2. It does not play well with chords in the style of an octave fuzz. However, there is little to no octave component to the tone. I added a pot to the mid scoop at the end of the circuit to dial back in some of those mids (and volume and ability to cut through the mix). With the control at zero, the stock mid scooped tone is fantastic and sax-like for single note melodies.

Here's a short down 'n' dirty video demo.

Transistor Muff Low End and Fuzzy Top

What has not already been written on the encyclopedic Big Muff page, http://www.kitrae.net/music/music_big_muff.html? That being said, there's an aspect to Muffs that is critical to my enjoyment of them; the presence of a cleaner low end with the fuzz sitting on the top. Perhaps this is part of why this omnipresent fuzz/distortion works so well with chords and especially melodies on top of a low string drone (Dinosaur Jr.).

The earlier transistor based Muffs (Triangle, Ram's Head) have less separation between the ends of the frequency range. The tone is cohesive and the fuzz feels balanced across frequencies. The Russian Muffs, Civil War, Green and Black, almost appear to be clean at the bottom. The tone knob needs to bleed in more of the high end to combat this. I say combat because, with fuzz, I like all of my frequencies to appear fuzzed out. Tube Screamers benefit/suffer from a similar action on the different frequency ranges.

The benefit becomes apparent in a band mix. After much experimenting with different fuzz, overdrive and distortion, the Muff sits in the mix of a 3 piece heavy rock combo with much authority. It doesn't get lost. It owns the room.

Here's a '76 Ram's Head I built for a friend.

This particular Muff has electrolytic capacitors in the clipping sections and sounds particularly good for the aforementioned low note, high note melodies over drones. Right now, this is my favorite.