OD with Fuzz Factory(or, maybe it's time for new fuzz?

Howdy folks!

I'll try to keep this short and sweet. I need a good OD, specifically one that works well with the Fuzz Factory. I've tried quite a few, and I just haven't found that special one yet. I've tried a Rat, a Blues Driver, a Fulltone OCD(vers. 2), a Box of Rock, and, well, that might be it.

At the moment the Fuzz Factory is my go to fuzz. It can be an unruly beast(being germanium and all), but I've got it set at a pretty decent Fuzz Face type level and really enjoy the sharp, clangy fuzz I get with the guitar volume rolled back.

As for music, I have a pretty wide variety of styles I enjoy playing(50's country,swamp blues, sun-scorched desert rock, surf, krautrock, new wave, shoegazer, noise) into a Humboldt County Blues jr.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated! I think it's safe to assume I'm not looking for a Marshall in a box type OD, but maybe more of a Fender tweed OD? Anybody out there use a Crazy Horse? Formula No.5?

The Fuzz Factory is a toy. Get a proper useable Fuzz that works. Don't discount any other distortions because they don't work well with a Fuzz Factory, nothing does. It's almost like that pedal was designed to sound terrible. If you like oscillations, feedback and crackles it's fine. For everything else it sucks.

Catalinbread DLS works really great with fuzzes. Formula No5 great pedal, but with it's own fuzzy sound. Not for everyone.

i love my fuzz factorys it has so many useable sounds in it for a "toy"

The Fuzz Factory is a toy?
Only in the hands of a child.

That aside, I use a Fuzz Probe along with a VS Open Road and Route 808. They both play along very well with the Fuzz Factory circuit.

The Fuzz Factory is a toy. Get a proper useable Fuzz that works. Don't discount any other distortions because they don't work well with a Fuzz Factory, nothing does. It's almost like that pedal was designed to sound terrible. If you like oscillations, feedback and crackles it's fine. For everything else it sucks.


:lol:

Toy - yeah, sure it is......


Although I will agree they can be difficult to reign in in a live setting. My suggestion - a fuzz with a more versatile range and greater stability. Skinpimp MKIII Tonebender.

What about a Blackout Effectors Mantra?

as long as you have the overdrive after the Fuzz Factory, I can't imagine it would be a problem. I'd recommend you pick your overdrive based more on your guitar and amp.

That said, check out the Field Effects Manifold Drive. Just got one, reminds me a lot of a Red Llama (which has an almost tweedish thing to it) but has a tone switch. Can go from low-gain to pretty high-gain and is relatively transparent - if you want something to stack with the Fuzz Factory, you don't want anything with too much character, as it has character enough!

Howdy folks!

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated! I think it's safe to assume I'm not looking for a Marshall in a box type OD, but maybe more of a Fender tweed OD? Anybody out there use a Crazy Horse? Formula No.5?


I am not of much help, and is just posting to say that i might be getting a Crazy Horse in the next month or so :twisted:

I have an Austone Millenium overdrive which is downstream of my Fuzz Factory (actually, ALL of my pedals are downstream from the FF, which is first in the chain).

They work very nicely together.

As to the comment that the FF is but a toy, pay no mind. It takes a modicum of trial-error experimentation, memory, patience. and a set of good ears to get the best out of it, but it's well worth the time, unless one suffers from ADD...:mrgreen:

I've had a Fuzz Factory for years (a gift) and while at first it was fun just to mess around with. My reference to it being a toy relates to the fact it's probably the worst fuzz out there in terms of practicality. It is effectively just a fun pedal to play with, but something I'd never want to take out and gig with. Unstable and crappy sounding in my experience.

For those that haven't looked inside one it's just a simple Fuzz Face pedal with some fixed resistors thrown out and replaced by pots. Not particularly well thought out pot placements either. The only sensible one is the 'comp' control, which is actually just a regular old bias pot like found on most modern fuzz pedals. Think Analogman's Sundial on his Sun Face. That is a pedal I'd recommend. Then there is another mildly useful one that reduces the voltage to the pedal to mimic a dying battery, except it doesn't sound as good.

Basically the Fuzz Factory's claim to sound like multitudes of other fuzz circuits is your usual smoke and mirror bull****. It can basically make itself sound like various broken Fuzz Face pedals and that is that. The list going around the internet with recommended settings has some quite questionable links between the sounds you are supposed to hear and what the pedal actually does. You can't cop the sounds of those other fuzzes without additional EQing, diode clipping and different transistor types.

I was actually so pissed with the pedal (because it was bought as a gift by someone that didn't know about guitar geek stuff and was sucked in by the sales stuff they'd read) I built my own version of the pedal that worked. It had EQing at the front end and back end of the circuit to mimic the various input caps and tone controls of other Fuzzes, sockets for transistors and diodes, bias and voltage sage controls, etc. The difference was that as long as the transistors were even half biased correctly you could get a useable sound from every setting.

The Fuzz Factory is a toy. Get a proper useable Fuzz that works. Don't discount any other distortions because they don't work well with a Fuzz Factory, nothing does. It's almost like that pedal was designed to sound terrible. If you like oscillations, feedback and crackles it's fine. For everything else it sucks.

Actually, I have to agree with imsilly. As a device to be used in a live setting it is to tempramental, and not in a good way. By the time you set the thing to a sound you like it is gone as soon as a knob is breathed upon.

For studio work its great.

I've had a Fuzz Factory for years (a gift) and while at first it was fun just to mess around with. My reference to it being a toy relates to the fact it's probably the worst fuzz out there in terms of practicality.

I will grant you that. It is a temperamental pedal to say the least. I was put off at calling it a toy, because it can produce some pretty amazing and off-the-wall tones. Sure, the pedal has its roots in a Fuzz Face, but so was the Tone Bender Mk II. The Fuzz Factory can go really off the track and be used to create some new and fresh sounds. That is what makes it unique. Vex didn't try to clone a circuit or even to make it more useful. Instead he made it wacky and exciting.

Live users include: Doug Pettibone (of Lucinda Williams' Band), Nels Cline, John Frusciante, Matthew Bellamy (of Muse), Daniel Johns (of silverchair), David Sylvian, etc. These are just the ones that came to mind first.

Actually, I have to agree with imsilly. As a device to be used in a live setting it is to tempramental, and not in a good way. By the time you set the thing to a sound you like it is gone as soon as a knob is breathed upon.

For studio work its great.I totally agree with you about its practicality in the studio, and now understand where imsilly's coming from - in a live setting the FF is challenging at best.

If you have time to play around with it, it's capable of giving a mind-blowingly rich array of classic as well as off-the-wall sounds, BUT I'll be damned if I can dial the same sound in twice in a hurry, rendering it close to useless in most live settings.

Still, I like its quirkiness and occasional lack of predictability.

Also, it's worth noting that Muse's Matthew Bellamy controls his FF from a pressure-sensitive pad mounted on his guitar. That must make a difference in being able to fine-tune the sonic mayhem on the fly...!