Initial thoughts:
This is a pedal that found me, rather than me finding it. I spoke to Brian from smallsound/bigsound (ssbs) awhile back as he was beginning to market his new fuzz. Now I got the impression that this pedal wasn’t designed with bass players in mind, but rather the synth crowd, who have a similar interest in the option to maintain some clean signal. He thought it might market well to bass players as well. I agreed to take a look and I kind of forgot about as some time passed, and then one day there was another e-mail and a couple of days later I had a pedal in my hand.
When I got to play with it, I was impressed with the sizzling high fuzz and separate clean/dirty volumes on the pedal. I did express some significant concerns that the volume of this pedal was pretty unusable after it had moved past 25%. When I say unusable, what I really meant was “SO MIND NUMBINGLY LOUD THAT ANY DEVICE CONNECTED TO IT WILL SURLEY MELT, EXPLODE, REFORM INTO A DEMON HEAD, AND THEN MELT AGAIN’. Yeah, it was THAT loud, clipping amps and other devices with nary glance.
Brian had a few ideas from our conversations and then twisted them in his evil little brain and then sent the augmented love-child back to me. An shape switch was added so that it would be easier to dial in a shape (rather than explore the whole range with a single knob). Mine has a three way toggle switch for range, but he expressed that this was still under exploration and might move to a two-way switch. My 3-way toggle for range is configured as: up is sizzle-y, middle is dampened, down is a more full high-mid boost. Additionally there were a pair internal trimmers added to better manage the volume and further expand flexibly.
This is a review of that pedal.
The comment he made about marketing well to bass players was spot on. This thing has displaced the Earthbound Supercollider as my most GASed over pedal.
Great review on that fuzz small sound Big sound. Looks like Im going to buy that one as you gave a really nice review and sound. I am not big on pedals. But I like a good pedal effects at times. I have a EBS Octabass, EBS Chorus, Mooger Fooger 101, TC Electronics Chorus, EBS reverb, EBS IQ. With this fuzz i can combine a really nice synth sound as well as a stand alone fuzz. Thanks for your review and comments. Great price for what it is. Do you recommend any others that have a great low end fuzz sound kuje that?
Just ordered it yesterday. This just may be the best bass fuzz for those who want to keep the low end pumpin’.
I never thought I would ever buy a fuzz, but this review of yours convinced me. Nice dog too.
Now that I have it , I must say It changed my mind about fuzz pedals. I am sure there are other good fuzz pedals that compare to this one but I have not heard any. To my ears this is the finest fuzz for bass but I have not tried it with a guitar. Love how it retains the bottom end. has loads of sounds and it is at a great price compared to others in its class. I thank you for the review which caught my eye and ears to buy this great sounding pedal.
Just received mine, and though it sounds terrific, if you’re using a stereo rig you’ll notice that it reverses phase when engaged, basically cutting lows :( For you mono-amping players, which the majority are, GO for it!