Your introduction to fuzz

[Dr Tony Balls]

Nother Muff....bought new in 1997 from South Austin Music. Had it for a grip, and eventually sold it preemptively before the switch broke.

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[Dullboy]

First time I remember fuzz really standing out to me was seeing the Beastie Boys video for Gratitude on MTV with Yauch playing that killer fuzzed out bass riff. I saw Dinosaur jr. shortly after in ‘93 and that’s when things started clicking for me.. so I went out and bought a Big Muff.

I tried out a Big Muff at band practice a couple of times in the late 90''s and experienced that thing which I'm sure many of us have had where you suddenly dissappear in the mix , I kind of wrote them off for years after that. It's only recently that Ive got interested in them again , and I guess these days I'm a bit more aware of other factors that effect your sound ( .....what guitar your using , what amp your running into and how it's set, other pedals in your chain before and after .....)
Needless to say I love them now , was definitely a case of "its not you , it's me. ..." as to way I didn't get on with fuzz for years , I just didn't know how to use it , and expected it to work just like a Marshall Guvner!
Dinosaur Jr was definitely a big eye ( or ear ) opener when I came to using fuzz and how it could sound , prior to that I think I just associated fuzz with Mudhoney and stuff like that , which is great but not really my cup of tea

It was just me messing around on my own with this stuff for years, so I was pretty clueless about that. It wasn’t until much later when I finally started my first band (with two other guitarists!) that I learned this lesson the hard way. The worst example was a Lovetone Big Cheese that arrived not long before we were to play an outdoor show. I was incredibly excited about that pedal, and it just completely disappeared every time I stomped on it. After some trial and error I started to understand why.

How have you fixed the disappearing sound? I think it's expecially true with two guitars band...

[1976@metal]

First time I remember fuzz really standing out to me was seeing the Beastie Boys video for Gratitude on MTV with Yauch playing that killer fuzzed out bass riff. I saw Dinosaur jr. shortly after in ‘93 and that’s when things started clicking for me.. so I went out and bought a Big Muff.

I tried out a Big Muff at band practice a couple of times in the late 90''s and experienced that thing which I'm sure many of us have had where you suddenly dissappear in the mix , I kind of wrote them off for years after that. It's only recently that Ive got interested in them again , and I guess these days I'm a bit more aware of other factors that effect your sound ( .....what guitar your using , what amp your running into and how it's set, other pedals in your chain before and after .....)
Needless to say I love them now , was definitely a case of "its not you , it's me. ..." as to way I didn't get on with fuzz for years , I just didn't know how to use it , and expected it to work just like a Marshall Guvner!
Dinosaur Jr was definitely a big eye ( or ear ) opener when I came to using fuzz and how it could sound , prior to that I think I just associated fuzz with Mudhoney and stuff like that , which is great but not really my cup of tea

It was just me messing around on my own with this stuff for years, so I was pretty clueless about that. It wasn’t until much later when I finally started my first band (with two other guitarists!) that I learned this lesson the hard way. The worst example was a Lovetone Big Cheese that arrived not long before we were to play an outdoor show. I was incredibly excited about that pedal, and it just completely disappeared every time I stomped on it. After some trial and error I started to understand why.

How have you fixed the disappearing sound? I think it's expecially true with two guitars band...

For me I just have to make sure it's the loudest thing on my board as far as level goes , I get that sounding good in relation to the bass and drums as the loudest gain sound I have and then set the level of the rest of my gain stages accordingly ( ie lower ) . Learned that from watching a J Mascis Rig Rundown

[theemadcap1]

My name is John and Im a Fuzz addict... I first came across fuzz when I was young in the late 1970s. My friend had a Big Muff. It sounded good but had so much background hiss. That was when people would use noise gates and such to try and quell that. Music wise, I always loved Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, Van Halen, KISS. I wanted to sound like that. I came across Mick Ronson's playing on Bowie's stuff and that was Thee Sound I had in my head that I wanted to make. Older guitar players were always so secretive about how to get that sound, "Oh, I just turn my Marshall up to 10..." In the late 80's and early 90's, Rainer Ptacek worked in the basement at the Chicago Store in downtown Tucson. He was the first person to show me a Dallas Rangemaster. Some magical old box that was supposedly amazing with guitar. Only problem it was still sealed in the box from old stock from the 1960's and it wasn't for sale. I got one of those Vox Chrome Treble Boosters for like $10. Wasn't too impressed, wasn't very loud. There wasn't the web like today where everything is described en minutia. I got a brown Fender Princeton in 1990 for free in a trade. Still got it. With that turned up, and an Echoplex, that got me in the territory. I found a MXR Distortion II, which I still have. It was the first pedal I got in the early 90's that approached the Tone Bender sound, if you turn all the knobs all the way up. Made it so you could be loud and heard better at a big show. Still got it. Wasn't till the late 90's, early 2000's I discovered ebay, specifically ebay.co.uk that I discovered a true Tone Bender and got the Impex Supa Fuzz that started my UK fuzz Addiction. I met Dave Main and Stu Castledine via the new DAM Forum around 2006 and discovered the MKI Tone Bender and what I had with that Marshall Supa Fuzz (Though at that time, Dave thought the Impex transistors were OC81Ds that had lost their ink).
I am still in recovery...

[Nick]

Boomers in da house (sorry)

Got interested in Hendrix, Jeff Beck etc from learning the guitar as a kid. Wasn't immediately drawn to teh fuzz0rz or any of that corksniffery yet though.
When I was 15/16, I was active on the Ultimate-guitar forum, and I made a friend called Faisal, with whom I played Pokémon Diamond/Pearl online at the time. He was also interested in 60s music, and more importantly, in stompboxes, and I guess that's how I started. So, around that time I grabbed a Russian Big Muff Pi (brand new!). Started teaching music after school to middle-class kids that sucked at music, and subsequently began gobbling up interesting/cheap 'vintage' fuzz pedals from my local classifieds (EH Deluxe Big Muff & Ibanez OD-850 come to mind).
At some point HCFX died, and I somehow registered here? I don't remember how it happened, but it was neat to land here. This was a groovy forum for cultivating my interest, and I've met many good people here over the years, that have been kind, enthusiastic, educational, and fun.
Collecting 'serious' vintage pedals never seemed like an option to me, until I grabbed an original Supa MKI for cheapsies off local classifieds (and I still fucking love that thing, almost 10 years later!)

Love y'all

[Doc Holliday]

Yep that growing collection amazes me. You do know Philips expecting that supa if any thing happens to you don’t you

[upstateanalog]

First time I remember fuzz really standing out to me was seeing the Beastie Boys video for Gratitude on MTV with Yauch playing that killer fuzzed out bass riff. I saw Dinosaur jr. shortly after in ‘93 and that’s when things started clicking for me.. so I went out and bought a Big Muff.

I tried out a Big Muff at band practice a couple of times in the late 90''s and experienced that thing which I'm sure many of us have had where you suddenly dissappear in the mix , I kind of wrote them off for years after that. It's only recently that Ive got interested in them again , and I guess these days I'm a bit more aware of other factors that effect your sound ( .....what guitar your using , what amp your running into and how it's set, other pedals in your chain before and after .....)
Needless to say I love them now , was definitely a case of "its not you , it's me. ..." as to way I didn't get on with fuzz for years , I just didn't know how to use it , and expected it to work just like a Marshall Guvner!
Dinosaur Jr was definitely a big eye ( or ear ) opener when I came to using fuzz and how it could sound , prior to that I think I just associated fuzz with Mudhoney and stuff like that , which is great but not really my cup of tea

It was just me messing around on my own with this stuff for years, so I was pretty clueless about that. It wasn’t until much later when I finally started my first band (with two other guitarists!) that I learned this lesson the hard way. The worst example was a Lovetone Big Cheese that arrived not long before we were to play an outdoor show. I was incredibly excited about that pedal, and it just completely disappeared every time I stomped on it. After some trial and error I started to understand why.

How have you fixed the disappearing sound? I think it's expecially true with two guitars band...

For me I just have to make sure it's the loudest thing on my board as far as level goes , I get that sounding good in relation to the bass and drums as the loudest gain sound I have and then set the level of the rest of my gain stages accordingly ( ie lower ) . Learned that from watching a J Mascis Rig Rundown

Exactly this along with careful eq’ing of the band so we’re not stomping all over each other sonically, even those times we might be playing the same part.

[Lach]

Cool thread to read through! I started playing guitar when I was a kid sometime in the late 90s, I didn't really have any interest in acoustic at the time and wanted to sound like Magic Dirt, NIrvana, Spiderbait, Silverchair... whatever else I was into back then. I'd spoken to some of the older cool kids who were playing guitar and they told me I needed a distortion effect as well for that sound so after pestering my parents for a while and stipulating that I DID NOT want an acoustic my old man, who was always very encouraging of me wanting to learn the guitar, eventually took me to the local music shop and I picked out a mid 70's MIJ Suzuki strat, a Dean Markley K-20 solid state amp and a DOD FX52 Classic Fuzz, which I think is basically a tweaked op amp Big Muff clone, and I was off! I still have all 3 pieces of gear!

[1976@metal]

Cool thread to read through! I started playing guitar when I was a kid sometime in the late 90s, I didn't really have any interest in acoustic at the time and wanted to sound like Magic Dirt, NIrvana, Spiderbait, Silverchair... whatever else I was into back then. I'd spoken to some of the older cool kids who were playing guitar and they told me I needed a distortion effect as well for that sound so after pestering my parents for a while and stipulating that I DID NOT want an acoustic my old man, who was always very encouraging of me wanting to learn the guitar, eventually took me to the local music shop and I picked out a mid 70's MIJ Suzuki strat, a Dean Markley K-20 solid state amp and a DOD FX52 Classic Fuzz, which I think is basically a tweaked op amp Big Muff clone, and I was off! I still have all 3 pieces of gear!

Cool ! DOD was always the brand that I remember jumping out at me from all the adds in the American guitar mags I used to by at the time ( would have been late 80s / early 90s ) .....wish I still had those mags , I used to pour over them endlessly !

[upstateanalog]

Cool thread to read through! I started playing guitar when I was a kid sometime in the late 90s, I didn't really have any interest in acoustic at the time and wanted to sound like Magic Dirt, NIrvana, Spiderbait, Silverchair... whatever else I was into back then. I'd spoken to some of the older cool kids who were playing guitar and they told me I needed a distortion effect as well for that sound so after pestering my parents for a while and stipulating that I DID NOT want an acoustic my old man, who was always very encouraging of me wanting to learn the guitar, eventually took me to the local music shop and I picked out a mid 70's MIJ Suzuki strat, a Dean Markley K-20 solid state amp and a DOD FX52 Classic Fuzz, which I think is basically a tweaked op amp Big Muff clone, and I was off! I still have all 3 pieces of gear!

I’m envious of people who still have their first guitar, amps, etc.. I read an interview with Ira Kaplin a while back where he talks about his 60’s Strat, Vibrolux, and Jazzmaster. All things he bought very early on in life and still has to this day. Same story with his RAT, he knows there’s newer pedals out there but his stuff works so he keeps on using it.