Any modern guitarist (or retro one for that matter), who doesn’t subscribe to Joe Gore’s Tonefiend website is missing out. If nothing else you must check out his analysis of the major germanium fuzz circuits released between 1962 and 1968. It is a magnificently researched and reported work. The only thing I would add is that some of the thinner sounding, lower gain fuzz circuits might find favor with players who are already overdriving their amplifiers and just want to add character to the amp distortion.
Thanks for the kinds words, Michael! 🙂
You are absolutely correct about the low-gain pedals. I didn’t take the route of demoing each pedal through varied amp settings because a) I’m a lazy old fker, and b) it would been such an unwieldy amount of info. I focused instead on the sonic variations between the circuits themselves by eliminating as many variables as possible. But my default setup — clean amp, relatively low volume — definitely favors some circuits more than others, and is especially unflattering to the older, lower-gain circuits.
But your comment, and similar ones the arose in the DIY Stompboxes forum do suggest an interesting (and relatively manageable) post on using low-gain circuits like the FZ-1 and Zonk within more complex signal chains, pairing them with various boosters and downstream processors. I’ll try that soon. Or you can. Or both! 🙂
Lazy you are not Joe. I am convinced you have a 30 hour day somehow and use every bit of it. Thanks again for an informative and fun post