5 Levels Of Fuzz | Tame To Insane

so i'm on a bit of a personal vendetta when it comes to fuzz i believe there's a fuzz pedal out there for everyone every guitar player every bass player every drummer every synthesis the world of fuzz is wide and wonderful and and welcoming for everyone despite this though i think it is one of the more misunderstood effects i think a lot of people think of fuzz as just something crazy way too much gain way too much distortion makes my amp sound like it's going to explode and that's just not the case there's so many different fuzz sounds out there from tame and approachable to wild and completely from outer space and everything in between so in today's video we're going to talk about five different levels of fuzz everything from the approachable uh and pretty sounding all the way to the wild and out there now the point of this video is not to talk about any specific brand or model of fuzz pedal even though i am going to highlight a few that i'm using in the video instead it's to turn you on to certain styles of fuzz circuit that you may be looking for it's to kind of help you decode uh what can be a sort of confusing and overwhelming category of effect i mean there's so many different fuzz pedals out there on the market today everyone has their own take on a tone bender or a fuzz face or a big muffin different features so we're going to talk about that in today's video but before we do a quick plug for my brand new video course fretboard fundamentals chords and rhythm this is a comprehensive video course to help you break out of ruts in your playing help you understand the fretboard get you playing chord progressions and chord voicings all over the neck and to help you understand what you're actually playing and hearing as well as covering some of the core fundamental techniques and approaches to rhythm guitar if you follow the link in the description box down below you can get 35 off the chords in rhythm course for watching this video and i greatly appreciate the support with all that out of the way let's take a look at the first level the fuzz face now if you know anything about fuzz you probably already know about the fuzz face if you're a jimi hendrix fan eric johnson david gilmour i mean countless other players have utilized the fuzz face circuit to great effect but i'm putting this at level one because i think it's the most approachable fuzz effect if you're coming from uh more of a traditional overdrive or distortion background and you might want to dip your toe into the fuzz pool i think a fuzz face a traditional late 60s silicon fuzz face circuit is a really good place to start for a few reasons the track you're about to hear features this pedal right here the jam pedals fuzz phrase now this is their custom shop edition so it's got the fancy suede covering they do a more normal version but this is an incredible example of a fuzz face circuit and if you notice i have the gain set all the way up and this is how most people run their fuzz faces they're simple it's a set it and forget it type pedal it's got a ton of saturation it's smooth it compresses your signal in a nice way without being overpowering or too much the other great thing about fuzz faces is they tend to clean up well and you'll notice in the track you're about to hear i start with a cleanish broken up signal i've double tracked that guitar part with the fuzz pedal on and the fuzz turned all the way up but you'll notice the beginning of the track it might not sound as fuzzy as you're expecting as the track goes on i start to roll my volume up a little bit more and you're gonna hear that saturation and compression come in more and more so this is level one [Music] [Music] [Applause] so [Music] now level two we're stepping a little bit deeper into the fuzz pool but we're sort of in the shallow end still and for this we're gonna talk about the tone bender now like the fuzz face the tone bender circuit is one of the most popular and most used fuzz circuits of all time it was actually other than the maestro fz1 the first mass-produced circuit ever actually the tonebender mark 1. this one however is a tone bender mark iv over the tone bender's life it went through a few different iterations and even the fuzz face is essentially a modified version of a mark 1.5 tone bender circuit from the mid 60s now i chose the mark iv tone bender because it has a really unique sound and a really unique feature this treble and bass control here has one of the widest sweeps of any tone control i've ever used on any pedal you can go from really dark and muffled and mid-rangey to super shrill and bright and punchy and everything in between now the tone bender mark iv can still be approachable it can clean up well it can still be relatively tame but where the fuzz face leaves off the tone bender can go even further if you want something a little brighter a little punchier a little more aggressive a tone bender circuit like the mark iv here is a really good option [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] so [Music] so [Music] next up is an octave fuzz specifically a super fuzz and this is another classic now if you're not familiar an octa fuzz like an octavia uh the super fuzz circuit basically is adding an octave up along with your guitar signal in the fuzz but it's not super clean it doesn't track very well it doesn't track intervals very well in chords it creates this sort of ring modulation kind of thing depending on what interval you're playing and it can get pretty gnarly and get pretty out of hand but it does it in a very musical way if you understand how to approach it there's a different technique a different approach to octave fuzzes than just normal fuzzes like the tone bender or the fuzz face these like to see a strat neck pickup for example up around the 9th 10th or 11th fret really makes that octave jump out there's a ton of character to them but they are a little more out there they're not for everybody i love octa fuzz an octafuzz like this is absolutely my favorite style of fuzz i love the weird alien space sounds you can get with it and a la hendrix it pairs up with a univibe very well which is what you're going to hear in this next track so i'm using this a stromer super fuzz these are built in new york city and it's quickly become one of my favorite fuzz pedals in my collection i bought it a few weeks ago and uh haven't looked back since [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] so you [Music] [Applause] [Music] now for level four i actually am going to recommend a specific fuzz pedal even though i said i wasn't going to the beginning of the video i lied i'm going to do it now and that is the xevex fuzz factory now i don't actually have a zvex fuss factory instead i have this this is a collaboration uh that chase bliss and zvex did about a year or so ago i bought this this was the second round they did and this is basically a fuzz factory but chase bliss's approach to the fuzz factory which yields a really unique really out there pedal with some interesting quirky features now if you know anything about the fuzz factory you know that it is one of the most unique fuzzes ever created it really does its own thing it's based off of a famous old-school fuzz circuit but zvex completely turned it on its head and turned it into something completely new it can get out of control it can self-oscillate it can do all kinds of wild things and if you're interested in a fuzz that can do traditional fuzz sounds but also step out and get into some wacky experimental weird territory i think a fuzz factory is a must-have now the bliss factory has a few unique features like an lfo which basically creates like a built-in tremolo which you're going to hear me use in this next track what's cool about this is it's not the most controllable sound it's not the most uh pretty sound but i think it's really cool and it influences your playing in a really unique way if you can let the fuzz and the guitar and the amp sort of interact with one another it can really cause you to play something different and unique something you wouldn't normally play with just a standard overdrive or distortion [Music] so so so [Applause] [Music] great now for the boss level level five for this i recommend what i would call a character fuzz something that's just weird something that's out there something that has its own unique spin and for that today i'm using the kangra from walrus audio now the kangra is the signature pedal from my friend jared scharf if you've watched saturday night live anytime in the last 15 years you've seen jared scharf play he was the house guitarist for starting out live and this is a really interesting pedal it's a fuzz it's an octa fuzz it does its own sort of fuzz thing but it has a built-in envelope filter like you would see in a synth for example now what's interesting about the kangra is there's not an external control for the amount of fuzz you just have a general volume control the rest of the controls here like sensitivity resonance frequency are all controlling the envelope and the filter and this can get some really interesting weird kind of sounds now on this track i'm playing the kangra but there's other fuzzes that you could put in this category for example the jexteles canyon climber this has been a favorite fuzz of mine for a long time this is a clone of a japanese companion fuzz from the late 60s it's really unique really interesting doesn't work for everything but when it's right it's right and that's what level 5 is all about having something that's a little quirky a little off the wall that you don't use all the time maybe it even doesn't live on your board but when you need that sound and you need the sound that only that pedal can give you that's it level five [Music] [Music] [Music] so [Music] so those are five levels of fuzz my five levels of fuzz from tame to weird and completely out there if you found this video useful let me know by leaving a like and a comment down below don't forget you can get 35 off the chords and rhythm course via the link in the description box down below as well and let me know what your five fuzzes would be for each one of these categories number one through five i wanna know in the comments section what would you pick for each category if you want more information on these pedals that i used in today's video i'll have them linked in the description box down below this video was not sponsored by anybody some of these pedals i bought myself others were given to me by the manufacturers but this was in no way a sponsored video these are just some of my favorite fuzzes that i own that's gonna do it for today's video my name is rhett shull thank you so much for watching and remember there is no plan b

Channel: Rhett Shull

Views: 155,457

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Id: mfsh5QBgirI

Length: 16min 14sec (974 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 18 2022