BuzzFix
Fuzz. We love it. It can turn a guitar line into a soulful lament or a smack in the face. A bass line can be fat, lardy and bouncy or a rusty chainsaw. What’s not to like? It’s become something of an obsession for us, starting with the multi-tool Spore and then adding the FuzzFix to our lineup for a different vibe and flavour. Now we have BuzzFix, who sits somewhere between the two.
Flavour is probably a good word to use in this context, BuzzFix brings a lot of it in a straightforward and compact package.
Where Spore gives you the tools to create a wide range of textures, BuzzFix focuses on EQ, filtering or tone. BuzzFix was designed to be as versatile as possible, to offer as much to the user as possible, but keep in the confines of a small box (pedal board friendly) and no more than 4 controls (brain friendly).
You can tell from a glance what the controls do, but there are a few extras:
Treble – You want bitey fuzz or singing warmth? Need to cut through your band? Turn it up.
Bass – Controls the low frequency (duh!), but we like to think of it as handling the ‘body’ of your sound. Perfect for beefing up a Tele bridge pickup, or taking the boom out of a neck-position humbucker.
Fuzz – We’re pleased with this one. It goes from being a little ‘driven when turned down (but not thin or anaemic) and then progressively heats up until things get too much and it can’t cope any more. Odd zippy/buzzy things happen at this point. This feature (and we consider it to be exactly that) interacts with the Bass control and is also influenced by the strength of your pickups. Vintage single-coils push BuzzFix more gently than high output humbuckers. BuzzFix is a nicely dynamic fuzz so you can set the ‘overload’ sound to only happen when you really dig in with your pick. Or not at all, if you don’t want to hear it.
Level – Loud. Simple as. Unity gain happens around half way up the dial so it can really pummel your preamp for more heavyness and sustain. If you’re into that kind of thing…
So there we have it – BuzzFix, a wide spectrum of fuzzy tone.