Fuzz Review: 3xfx Fatman

Initial thoughts:

It’s a bit hard to remember what my initial thoughts on this pedal were as I first stumbled onto it well over a year ago. I bought an earlier box design that was narrower and taller, the external design changed to a wider flatter box which I happened to pick up used and I prefer the newer design so that’s the one I kept. So I’ve had both the new and used experience with this box and stands as one of the only pedals I’ve ever purchased twice.

I remember the words of my lovely wife when she first saw it sitting on the kitchen counter: “You’re not planning on bombing something are you?” I said no at the time, but later I realized that I should have answered yes… your eardrums!

This twin mode pedal brings two distinct sonic flavors to the table. The first side is a very thick and glitchy distortion. This is not a smooth overdrive and has a pretty high noise floor even on the lowest settings. The second side is an oscillating fuzz with the ability to control the frequency with a knob or the onboard photo-resister.

This review has been a bit of a long time coming because of my inability settle on how I wanted to handle the sound samples. My default set don’t really do much to highlight the coolness of this pedal. In the end, I decided to stick with what I have, and let everyone else interpret how they want to use them.

Here is a clip of me using the pedal a little more musically than the samples to follow, it’s from my ‘golden age’ clips.

Starts with “Lead Mode”
Switches to “Rhythm Mode” and then back and forth between the two after the change.