Sonus Pedals 1968 Fuzz

Sonus Pedals

Back in the days when Hendrix roamed this planet, only around 1 in 10 of 'off the shelf' Arbiter Fuzz Faces were considered to be sounding really good. Back then, a set of Germanium transistors would be soldered on a pcb together with some standard values of resistors. The result would be a pedal that distorts OK, but only 10% would actually 'sing', have a lot of harmonic richness to it, and would 'clean up' nicely when the guitar's volume control would be lowered.

In the 40-something years that followed the secrets of the circuit would be extensively researched by hobbyists resulting in a wealth of knowledge about each different components' role in the overall end result in sound.

Its not so hard to make a working Fuzz pedal, but it takes quite a bit of experimenting, adjusting, swapping different brands and builds of components to get it to sound 'better than you could imagine'.

The first time we used proto1 in a jam session setting it freaked us out to be frank.

Sounds we had heard on Hendrix albums but could never recreate were coming out of the speakers seemingly all by themselves.

When we heard that, we knew we might just have a 'product' here, these sounds were too good to be ignored....

So we decided to make a small series of these, 10 Fuzzes.

We tried a lot of different types of Germanium transistors. Indeed a learning curve period, it took some months before we ended up with a sound we liked. We rigorously tested and auditioned around 200 of these transistors, to determine their Hfe (amplification) and leakage. And if those 'numbers' were right, that still didnt mean they actually sounded musical to our ears. Out of all the Germanium transistors we auditioned, only around 5-10% was deemed 'good enough' for a Fuzz we would be willing to actually 'promote'.

Our Fuzzes are reacting very strongly to the volume setting of the guitar. If the guitar's volume is set below 5 for example, you'll have a brilliantly clear 'clean' sound, when the guitar's volume is set to full you'll have that classic Jimi lead tone, sustain for weeks if you want :-)