ZVEX Fuzz Factory
lucylespian
Posts: 2,403
Was checking these out on teh net.
Anyone got one??
Sounds like a cool bit of gear. I'm starting to get the hang of what pedal is what, and these ZVEX ones seem pretty cool and high end.
Input anyone ?
Anyone got one??
Sounds like a cool bit of gear. I'm starting to get the hang of what pedal is what, and these ZVEX ones seem pretty cool and high end.
Input anyone ?
Music is not a competetion.
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That said, I've only heard great things from his boxes. It's kind of like Keeley in that if your box breaks ever for any reason other than dropping it off a building, Z.Vex will fix it free of charge, so good warranty. If money wasn't an issue I'd probably spring for his Box of Rock.
7/9/06 LA 1
7/10/06 LA 2
10/21/06 Bridge 1
'06 - London, Dublin, Reading
'07 - Katowice, Wembley, Dusseldorf, Copenhagen, Nijmegen
'09 - London, Manchester, London
'12 - Manchester, Manchester, Berlin, Stockholm, Copenhagen
because it's so high gain it lacks any semblance of dynamics.
i found it exhausting to listen to. i tried to love it. i've owned two.
i did one sort of neat solo with it but it's just not musical to my ears.
john frusciante would disagree!
Do you know exactly which songs he uses one on??
he's in a band with anthony kiedis so he's disqualified.
i love muse. matt has FFs built into guitars. still don't like the tone.
That's funnny !!
I was hoping to hear some great fuzz tones whrn I saw the Black Keys, but teh Roland Space Echo really dominated his tone, and when the added teh fuzz. it didn't do that much. I was hoping for some ripping, sounds like the amp is gonna explode, JAck White kinda stuff.
also look at a seymour duncan tweak fuzz. it's very flexible.
and both are much more reasonably priced.
Knowledge is not wisdom.
Wisdom is not truth.
Truth is not beauty.
Beauty is not love.
Love is not music.
Music is the best.
~Frank Zappa
On the subject of mammoth, if you are interested in checking out a zvex distortion pedal, I would personally recommend the "Wooly Mammoth". It's designed for bass, but sounds amazing on guitar as well. Tons and tons of low end, plus loads of sonic mayhem. The only reason I haven't gotten one yet is because I recently picked up an original sans amp psa1 rack unit which gives me such a wide range of analog circuit distortion tones it's hard for me to justify buying another fuzz. That plus I also own a Red Witch Fuzz God, so I'm not hurting enough in the fuzz department to justify the $300 US for another pedal. But I think the Mammoth is great. Zachary Vex didn't design it's circuit, but to my mind that's almost an even bigger endorsement. Even though he didn't design it he thinks it's so good he's proud to put his name on it. One of these days I'll still probably get one. I think the Wooly Mammoth is a great pedal. I'd recommend seeing if you can find a way to try both before deciding on either.
Recently a guy i've known for a quite a long time dropped the fact that he's a pedal dork like me, and that he owns a Fuzz Factory, from probably about '98 or so. He's going to let me borrow that, which is freaking great. If i agree with exhausted's opinion, i didn't drop cash on it, can try something else. Looking at a Fulltone Soulbender, and am considering the new SweetSound Fuzz line (four new ones, out basically today, 2 FF style, one Bender style, one Muff style)
I own a Box of Rock (and have played a couple others) and am behind Z's build quality and tone 100%. Plus they're so damn original. That says something.
As far as Kiedis, maybe if somebody stapled a Fuzz Factory to his vocal cords the world would be safe again for people with eardrums. IMO.
I knew someone would say that.
Two things, the black Keys guy was using a Big Muff That night, which is why I expected some similar tones. Had a Peppermint Candy fuzz set up as well, but didn't see him use it, and I was standing at his feet, he nearly swiped me with the headstock on his guitar a coupla times, so I would have seen.
I know jAck uses Big Muff, but i'm not looking to get identical. I don't have an Airline or Fender/Sears amps either.
Ball park is close enough for me.
too many variables with fuzz. well, with all distortions really.
Yeah, I don't really know much about fuzz pedals really.
Do you normally run them on top of a clean setting, or on top of an already distorted setting, or on that Just about to break up but not quite kinda level ??
What do people here do ??
i tend to run the fuzz pedal on it's own into my amps usual setting which is right around breakup. (breaks up with P90s and HBs, clean with low output singles).
i tend to have the gain backed off a lot on the fuzz pedal which leaves more character and dynamics to the sound (9 o'clock on my FZ-3, practically off on my muff). tone to taste, volume at a slight boost.
low output guitars have the most interesting sound with my FZ-3. my mustang for instance. i don't like it as much with my SG. my casino with some volume rolled off is nice too.
just too many variables but that's what works for me. and it's why i don't like things like the fuzz factory apart from very limited applications. it's just full throttle all the time with that thing.
This pedal doesn't do the volume roll-off thing that well, IMO. But i found out that it stacks extremely well with my zvex Box of Rock. The BoR doesn't really have much gain, but has tons of output volume. i ran the FF into it cranked all the way up, and the BoR gave it better tone and output. And the FF gave the BoR GREAT volume rollback tones. More gain then the BoR would normally have, but still outstanding clarity. i was really excited about this, tho i would still rather have a fuzz that was good stand-alone, also.