I Didn't Really Like Fuzz - Is THIS the Secret to Fuzz Clean Up? Jim Dunlop Jimi Hendrix Fuzz Face
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I think this must have been covered by @ThatPedalShow somewhere, but I can't find it. But anyway - I never found that I could get those glassy strat clean up tones with a Fuzz, until I tried this...
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Jimi did this 55 years ago but it never really caught on for some reason. Playing with the volume knob and a silicon FF is just heavenly! You suddenly have the best "transparent" overdrive tones at your fingertips from a circuit that has 6 or 8 components in it, especially with a Strat! Great playing BTW!
I remember many years ago hearing a live version of Jimi’s Red House which started absolutely clean and gradually got more and more distorted. By the end it was super heavy and for years I had no idea how he did it. One of the best guitar tones of all time!
@@malcolmgordon2988 I think he does it on the blues version of Voodoo Chile on Electric Ladyland as well. It's truely a epic display of guitar tone!
@@malcolmgordon2988 if you're handy, you can source the parts to build the circuit for peanuts. It's pretty rewarding!
It was actually widely known, all old fuzz circuits were related, but before jimi people used a fuzz for a particular riff or lick, not as a basic guitar sound for entire songs, when you're only using it for a few seconds at a time, there's no need to use the guitar volume.
The reason these old fuzz circuits clean up is the extremely low input impedance, almost all pedals input impedance is 100k or more, old fuzz circuits inputs are only 10k.
This is also why buffers play havoc with them, and using a wah in front of, and with a fuzz face doesn't work so well.
But a word on the hendrix fuzz face. These were designed for modern tastes, modern guitars and modern amps. They have way less distortion than they should, and the mid range is way too high. It's almost like they added the mid range to make any rig sound like you're using a mid heavy marshall, and if you are using a mid heavy marshall, they tend to sound awful.
Old silicon fuzz faces had tons of distortion, a completely different mid range as well.
But there's more than 6 or 8 components. There's 9 on a normal FF circuit board. There's a total of 13 on a big hendrix ff, and there's about 30 on the mini fuzz faces.
But if you're looking for a dunlop silicon ff that actually sounds like an old one, get the dark blue mini. That thing is a fire breather.
I wouldn't use the word transparent. But it is a great overdrive. Use it almost daily.
I don't know if you watched TPS last night but they want you on the show...most of the live stream was with Marcus Reeves and fuzz...Mick was waxing lyrical about your playing at the gig the other night. Saying some well deserved things about your playing. Just thought you should know.
Would love to see John do an episode with them!! Maybe on modeller tones, amp tones 😊
@@vivekteega yeah...I'm a big fan of TPS but I think they would have a melt down if they had a helix on the show ..😂😂 would be great for balance though.... I love pedals but I also love the tones that John gets... Would certainly be a great challenge though... Mick and Dan..big amps..big pedal board Vs John..helix and frfr... So kind of old school gigging rig Vs modern day reality ...
For years I thought fuzz wasn’t for me, then I got a Fuzz Face Jimi Hendrix Mini… and fell down the rabbit hole! Absolutely love it when you clean it up with the guitars volume! I have mine in front of a TC Polytune with buffer on. Also, the ‘Mini’ version HAS a 9V input and an internal trim pot for bias, as well as being a much more pedalboard friendly size.
Those minis sound great but have a tremendous volume decrease making it unusable for live situations, at least for me
Use a boost after it, that will work
Same here! It opened up a universe of blissful tones for me. What I had previously been trying to achieve with multiple pedals - and failed - I achieved only with this little Fuzz Face.
Beautiful sounds and beautiful playing, brother!
This is also a great demonstration of how to use a Strat ... your picking dynamics are quite varied, which I've found really is a key to getting a Strat to respond the way they can. They really do need to be hit with some force at times. Really comes through with a fuzz face.
You helped me. Thanks so much! Just got a Fuzzface Mini Germ. Had been trying it at second position after tuner. I was only successful with a Squier CV Tele. After watching this video, I moved it to the front of the board, in front of the tuner. That made a HUGE difference. Much more control now. It works with some of my other guitars now too. Thanks again.
The MXR 108 mini is the same circuit with a little buffer button. It was my first fuzz pedal and it still one of my favourites.
I never thought of this, but I bet this is why my fuzz face sounds better in front of my Blues Driver!
Such excellent content, I’ve gone full TH-cam alert for all JNC sightings.
The Jimi Hendrix Fuzz Face is the same fuzz that Mick from TPS loves for this very reason -- its ability to clean up. He and Dan were also able to replicate this pedal extremely closely with the Chase Bliss Automatone Preamp Mkii, including its ability to clean up at low volume.
Congratulations and welcome to the club, sir. Cheers, D 🤙🏼
That is a beautiful piece of music good Sir! I have an Analogman Sunface that does the same thing w a Strat. It's magical to my ears!
I own several fuzz pedals but I never use them in my rig. My fuzz face is my favorite for sure. So great when you roll down the volume. Great video!
Just bought this pedal on ebay :) looking forward to playing it. Always wanted a fuzz face in that original casing - built a few over the years, and the BC108 typically sound great.
Ohmygosh, amazing playing!
beauty of an into. loved it!
Great playing and tone! Does a treble bleed on the guitar's volume pot hinder the glassy clean effect? What type of treble bleed, if any, was in the guitar in this video?
You are the most inspiring to me right now, the one that most keeps me lifting up my guitar and play
I've never been the biggest fuzz face fan but i really like the fuzz face i bought a year or two ago. I keep the bias trim pot quite high to give a smoother sound (not a fan of the spitty voltage starved sounds) and then have the fuzz quite low and the volume up high to give more of an overdrive than a fuzz feel. That in to a well driven amp with some delay and reverb gives quite a good EJ violin tone approximation
Tim Pierce has a TH-cam video called The Pedal Everyone Is Talking About, May ‘23, on the The Kingtone FUZZ, which has built in post fuzz buffers and sounds great
Once you crack the nut of fuzz, you'll swim in all that fuzzy glory. Presumably there's a bunch of Fuzz Face clones out there with a buffered output that allow for this with no need for the buffered pedal post. (Quick check assures that yes, but mostly boutique pedals) I have found this glass with my Mythos Golden Fleece in basically the middle of my pedalboard, nothing seems to disturb it too much (apart from gain stacking with my other fuzz, too squashed). If you are fuzz-curious the Golden Fleece is a great shout.
Awesome intro!
Yeah having an overdrive with some tone shaping always ON after a fuzz face is a great trick. This way you have the buffered like you mention but you can tame/EQ all sort of wild fuzz that do cleanup. This way you can do the Hendrix thing without sounding like a total ripoof.
There is wonderful video on Andertons Channel with Rabea in a blind comparison picking his favorite. Wonderful variety of Fuzzes. The video is called "Ultimate Fuzz Shootout - Winner Stays On Edition".
I like Fuzzes for the non-guitar sounding tones and singing sustain and articulation they can produce.
Have you played with the input impedance of your Stomp without the external buffer? Normally it will vary depending on the first block in the Stomp, or you can force it to be 1M or whatever value you choose.
Nice! I have my fuzz before a buffer as well.
But struggle with the settings for a clean amp.
I have the fuzz at full, but volume? Unity level is really low on the pot. How do you set yours?
I use an Analogman Sunface and a Joey Landreth High Road both Fuzzface style fuzzes into the 29 Pedals Flwr and love running them into any brightish low gain overdrive to help with the same job as the buffer with the bonus of taming and smoothing out the fuzz when you turn your guitar volume back up
Hey John...have you thought about doing a Reader's Choice video to vote on say your top five best Intro's to date....maybe the top five voted you could give the backing tracks and tab out for free or perhaps break down how to play them and how you put them together using the Helix patch used or something of that nature.....for taking part in voting.....Cheers!
Would love to see a comparison of this fuzz to the stomp’s fuzz face!
How would this apply just using the Helix and the Fuzz drives in that? Never like the Fuzz tones in there either for similar reasons. Thanks
Similar story. I hated the sound of fuzz and never kept one on my board. The first fuzz I ever found that I liked was an Analogman Sun Face. That changed everything. Cleaned up beautifully with the guitar volume, and was a crisp type of fuzz, rather than muffled like many others.
The part that surprised me was the signal path. Everyone said put the fuzz at the very beginning, before any buffer. It sounded great. But one day while experimenting I put it after the buffer with my other drive pedals, and it got much louder, more mid focused, and angrier sounding. Changed it completely. Now I move it back and forth based on the sound I want. Incredibly versatile.
Through a real amp, this works better.
Been playing for 40 years and bought my first fuzz 3 years ago. It’s always on and always first. With it, I can go from glassy shimmering cleans to just crushing dying amp sounds and everything in between. I think germanium is better for this too but the silicone fuzz faces do it just as good.
I❤fuzz
I too have never been a big fan of fuzz. It’s like listening to a guitar being played through a piece of paper and a comb (I wonder how many of the younger generation will know what I’m talking about?).
For the uninitiated (and young) it is called a Kazoo. Along with the comb contraption, there was a sheet metal insrtument,
and the place where the wax paper went looked like a pot pipe lol.
You gotta try JHS's Pollinator V2. Best Fuzz Face circuit ever!
This glassy cleanup is what the pedal pawn fuzz pedals do very well I understand the key is the impedance interplay with the guitar pickups and fuzz circuit input impedance
nice
In the AnalogMan SunFace fuzz pedals, there is a 50k trimmer pot on the circuit board that you can use to add some resistance in series with the guitar signal, which widens the sweet spot of the guitar volume knob. Also, Josh at JHS has a video where he demonstrates his favorite Fuzz Face mods: th-cam.com/video/ghxwcSiY7GQ/w-d-xo.html
Do all the Sunface models have that 50k trimmer pot? I see several different models for sale on the used market. Thank you.
@@WillfulThinker Yes, all the AnalogMan SunFaces have this mod.
Has anyone done this sort of thing with a multi-fx pedal, and if so, did it make the sound better in any way?
THIS is a case of gear making you sound different. Now I have to try this with my three fuzzpedals. Never been able to get that glassy sound
Variation wrinkle - Some folk reckon that backing off the Fuzz pot just a 'Smidge' (technical term) gives an even nicer roll-off.
This may be down to component/pickup variation however.
Worth experimenting with.
Yes, I have found this to be true
YMMV with different setups
Yes i know what you mean. My '70's Dunlop FzFc cleans up even better with its pair of Germanium NKT 275's transistors compared to your Si BC108's.
(BTW what is TPS? Remember this is an international forum type of thing here. on youtube)
That GLASSY sound is a very pronouned TONE that you get from the vintage style Magnatone Amps. Like the TWILIGHTER.
Love the tones you're getting from the pedal. Also, I've noticed that you use a machete to unbox new gear, but it seems quite unwieldy. Might I suggest an angle grinder or even a chainsaw?
I actually did use a chainsaw for a PRS Silver Sky SE unboxing, but it felt too understated
@@johnnathancordy I see you actually did use it. An absolute madman 🤣
Fuzz is like a hairy lady...i mean you can work with that if there is no other...option but its easier to choose shaved....in guitaristic terms...a way smoother overdrive.
The comment about the first pedal basically handling impedance conversion, so you don't have to worry about loading afterward, really is true for the vast majority of pedals. Most pedals have either an amplifying stage or buffer stage just before the output (often as part of the signal processing, e.g., a tone circuit or a 2nd amp stage in a distortion circuit). The pedal's output comes right from that final active stage, usually with just a fixed resistor and capacitor between its low-impedance output and the output jack. The Fuzz Face is fairly unusual in having the level control done simply by a pot after all of the processing, with its wiper connected to the output jack, rather than being before or within the last active circuit (it also has a really high resistance value for that control, 500 kohm-not unusual for a passive circuit like a guitar's electronics, but unusual for an active circuit). This makes is significantly affected by whatever comes next. After all, it's an old pedal (ca. 1966), and probably they assumed it was going right into the (high impedance) input of a tube amp. The idea of making sure pedals have a low impedance output (making them relatively immune to loading) probably didn't come for a few years after the Fuzz Face, when players started chaining pedals. For a good technical discussion, look up the ElectroSmash analysis of the Fuzz Face circuit. They have a section devoted to output impedance. Then compare the FF output to the output of a Tube Screamer or DS-1 (also on ElectroSmash). -Tom
And just to clarify, a subsequent buffer is not chucking the high end back up; it's preventing loading from mucking up the FF output spectrum. Though from my look at the output stage, it seems to me that loading would affect the low end and not the high end, and the loading effect will be strongest at full volume (on the FF). The ElectroSmash article also says the Eric Johnson swaps the 500k output pot for 100k, which builds a pretty strong low cut into the FF.
Clean up is very dependent on guitars/pick/amp etc
Fuzz Face style circuit is the way to go to clean up
For beautiful clean up, also try (obviously) Analogman Sunface (I borrowed one and that’s what got me going. My Fulltone 69 is great and clean ups really nicely. I’m also a big fan of the very underrated Carcosa Fuzz, which cleans up well with the “after” set low (and can go gnarly and splatty in other settings)
I have a Carcosa, can you please share your settings?
@@FullMetalDMZ
Depends on gtr (bc of impedance). Experiment!
Clean up works best (for me) w my Strat on neck. Works almost as well on some other guitars “After” knob low, like 8 or 9 o’clock. Before high, like 3:00
But the way I do it (and this method really only works well w a gtr I already know will clean up, etc) is:
I set “unity gain” with my gtr volume on my Strat at like 3 or 4 (I make it so fuzz ON w gtr volume down is about the same as Fuzz off and gtr on 9-10). Then, I can turn fuzz on, roll my gtr volume way down and get glassy clean tones (think Little Wing “Clean”) and as I turn my volume up I get more and more gain until full blown fuzz. It’s awesome!
I do like to have a very low gain (just a little grit and mid focus) pedal on after, but not always.
The volume knob on a Fuzz also acts like a tone nob. The more you roll it up the more high-end you start introducing. You don’t need a buffer. Now you do start to hit the front end of your amp harder. One has to play with it. But a fuzz on itself will “Glass-up”.
The fuzz face used to be prone to picking up taxi messages and all sorts of nonsense , think there’s evidence of this when Jimi played the Isle Of Wight festival. Great playing here chief especially in full fuzz mode !! 😀
Back in the day, I had a Fuzz Face clone and a Vox V847 clone that both picked up stray analog radio signals. It was a nightmare trying to narrow down why my rig was picking up Spanish talk radio. You don't think to check more than one pedal 😆
Never had the issue with the dissapearing tops with germanium fuzz.
Germanium is certainly the best at it in my experience
So is it possible to get this touch responsive “stringiness” happening with a fuzz block on the Helix?
No. Kemper Stage can do it though, with the Kemper Fuzz block and the authentic impedance option selected
@@sambroxguitar Helix allows you to set the input impedance or you can set to “Auto” which I believe is supposed to be automatically set according the first pedal in the chain. Is that different from Kemper’s “authentic” impedance setting?
@@r0bophonic yes. At least, the fuzz in the HX series of boxes doesn’t react like a pedal would, in my experience. I’ve tried the different impedance settings.
@@sambroxguitar Interesting. I’m going to experiment with this on my Helix LT as I haven’t tried it before. Using the volume knob is one of the main reasons people use fuzz pedals so I’m surprised Helix engineers didn’t work this out.
Fun Tip: For that fuzz sound without the price, just take a razor to your guitar amp speaker...
will this work if plugged into a Katana Amp?
Yes. Just because the Katana is a modeler with effects onboard, doesn't mean that you can't have pedals in front of the amp. I'd recommend you play on a clean tone to get the full effect. Playing in one of the fuzzy OD settings may muck it up a bit.
Was the baseplate misaligned? You didn’t mention it 😂 (much)
Great tone, the only fuzz I like is the original FuzzFace (and MetalMuff, but I don't think that is a fuzz)
If you are trying to " clean " up a fuzz, then fuzz isn't for you, you are not supposed to understand clip a clipped signal...trying an over drive or tube preamp might be worth your while
It seemed pretty strange to me that I've never seen you use a fuzz, given the fact that you like Eric Johnson 🤔
Save the clean amp-fuzz combo for muffs and the like, the secret for a Fuzz Face circuit is to simply have an amp with heavy/warm cleans/breaking up slightly, as using a Fuzz Face style circuit into a cleanish amp never lets the pedal features shine, including that special guitar volume roll-back cleanup. So, the recipe is a slightly breaking up amp, roll-off the fuzz control a little, like to 3'oclcock to get rid of the noise and bite, and boom.
Here is the gospel as far as I'm concerned.
th-cam.com/video/Qte0vvpWb2o/w-d-xo.html
Love your playing - still dont like Fuzz
The Jimi Hendrix reissues were notoriously bad circuit re-designs, and didn't sound like the originals. That's why boutique fuzz faces came into the market, to satisfy that demand.
And of course, germanium transistors > silicon transistors.
Yea man Wah pedal works great too