I hate to admit it, but my fondness for Fuzz Face clones is dwindling.
Why? They sound best when the amp is just too loud, and I'm starting to be careful about my hearing.
So it's a tie for my other fave 3, which all work pretty well at sane volumes:
-a properly tweaked Big Muff
-Foxx Tone Machine, or decent clone (pretty easy pedal to copy)
-Fulltone Soulbender (I actually prefer it over the Tonebenders)
For me, a fuzz pedal sucks unless it completely envelopes the guitar signal, and it's gotta have a big bottom end. It should be really hard to harness, and I enjoy having to surrender to it.
As far as the mix of rasp/cream, oscillation/feedback, and how well it cleans up when you back off the guitar volume - they are all subjective preferences.
I also agree that the amp should already be a bit dirty on it's own. Stomp on the fuzz, and it should get really exciting
.
The only other pedal that I know of that I get as much of a thrill out of is an analog delay that will feed back on the repeats
.