Thunderpaws Posted February 10, 2020 Share Posted February 10, 2020 I’m looking for inspiration at sensible prices. About to buy a guitar and want a fuzz to go with it. Looking for vintage type hard blues similar to Jack White or Tyler Bryant. Don’t have much money left after the guitar though! Under £100. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EdwardMarlowe Posted February 19, 2020 Share Posted February 19, 2020 Check out eBay for those min-pedla types that typically go for around £25-£30. I've generally found them to be pretty good, and cheap enough to play with different types and voices. Electro-Harmonix have several variations of the Big Muff in their range, all at around £50 to £60 that will get you a good fuzz too. I'd love one of the round Hendix fuzz pedals myself, but they seem vastly overprice at over £100; for me, fuzz is such a basic effect I don't think it's worth outlaying to big bucks on it. As long as a cheap fuzz pedal is solid (durability), it's really not an effect that requires a lot of finesse... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rOB Posted June 13, 2020 Share Posted June 13, 2020 (edited) On 10/02/2020 at 19:44, Thunderpaws said: I’m looking for inspiration at sensible prices. About to buy a guitar and want a fuzz to go with it. Looking for vintage type hard blues similar to Jack White or Tyler Bryant. Don’t have much money left after the guitar though! Under £100. what did you go for? I'm shopping for a dirt pedal at the moment. Edit: I went for a Nano Big Muff. Arrived the other day, cue lots of fun, noise making. Now to find useful sounds! Edited June 21, 2020 by rOB Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jazz Club Posted June 23, 2020 Share Posted June 23, 2020 (edited) I recently bought a Behringer super Fuzz pedal £21.70 from Thomann in Germany . Its a excellent pedal and won’t break the bank. Edited June 23, 2020 by Jazz Club 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EdwardMarlowe Posted June 24, 2020 Share Posted June 24, 2020 Never owned one, but tried the Behringers and they do seem to be a decent knock-off of the obvious Boss models if that's what you're after. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
leftybassman392 Posted June 26, 2020 Share Posted June 26, 2020 Just a bit of technical background: overdrive covers a huge range of sounds. Fuzz is a particular type of overdrive, characterised by a very fizzy distortion ( @EdwardMarlowe, the unit you're thinking of is called the Fuzz Face more here, a '60s throwback probably best known for being used by Jimi Hendrix but in truth most rock/blues guitarists had one in their rack at around that time: they're still popular today, and despite being a very simple circuit wrapped up in a funky container, '60s originals in good nick go for silly money). Overdrive/distortion/fuzz/high-gain are all terms associated with this type of pedal, and there are almost as many variations on the basic idea as there are guitarists using them. My suggestion would normally be to visit your nearest guitar shop and try a few out in the price range you're looking at. However since that is likely to prove difficult (not to mention risky IMHO) right now, you could do worse than check out some YouTube reviews. They won't really tell you how it will sound with your gear, but they will at least show you some of the common variations, and give a bit of insight into how they work. While I'm here, many guitarists feel that a good valve amp is as far as you need to go with overdrive, but since they're mostly expensive and mostly heavy there's quite a lively market in amp modelling pedals, so you might want to have a look at some of those as well. Here's something to get you started: 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jazz Club Posted June 26, 2020 Share Posted June 26, 2020 (edited) On 24/06/2020 at 13:02, EdwardMarlowe said: Never owned one, but tried the Behringers and they do seem to be a decent knock-off of the obvious Boss models if that's what you're after. Ive got lots of Behringer effects pedals and all work really well and are great value for money. Edited June 26, 2020 by Jazz Club 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jazz Club Posted June 26, 2020 Share Posted June 26, 2020 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EdwardMarlowe Posted June 30, 2020 Share Posted June 30, 2020 I must watch that video in full later on. Skimming the intro, I suspect I'm on the same page as that guy - I've always been dubious about the idea of paying a fortune for high end effects when actually as long as there's a basic levle of build quality / reliability, the only significant difference between boutique and mass market, "cheap" pedals is subjective taste regarding the sound. Best bargain I ever got was one of the original 1994 Electro Hamonix-Sovtek Big Muff Pi pedals - the green one with the battery operation (no slot for an adaptor). Still got mine, mint, in the wooden box it came in. I paid £45 in 1994; I gather I could sell it for anywhere between £400 and £500 now. I wish I'd bought half a dozen of them back when! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EdwardMarlowe Posted June 30, 2020 Share Posted June 30, 2020 On 26/06/2020 at 09:15, leftybassman392 said: Just a bit of technical background: overdrive covers a huge range of sounds. Fuzz is a particular type of overdrive, characterised by a very fizzy distortion ( @EdwardMarlowe, the unit you're thinking of is called the Fuzz Face more here, a '60s throwback probably best known for being used by Jimi Hendrix but in truth most rock/blues guitarists had one in their rack at around that time: they're still popular today, and despite being a very simple circuit wrapped up in a funky container, '60s originals in good nick go for silly money). Overdrive/distortion/fuzz/high-gain are all terms associated with this type of pedal, and there are almost as many variations on the basic idea as there are guitarists using them. My suggestion would normally be to visit your nearest guitar shop and try a few out in the price range you're looking at. However since that is likely to prove difficult (not to mention risky IMHO) right now, you could do worse than check out some YouTube reviews. They won't really tell you how it will sound with your gear, but they will at least show you some of the common variations, and give a bit of insight into how they work. While I'm here, many guitarists feel that a good valve amp is as far as you need to go with overdrive, but since they're mostly expensive and mostly heavy there's quite a lively market in amp modelling pedals, so you might want to have a look at some of those as well. Here's something to get you started: That's the birdy. I remember an ad in Guitarist (UK) about 1993 ish for a "Dallas Arbiter Fuzz Face" from one of the big stores in London, selling them for £39. No ideaif that was a new run or NOS or used or what, but I wish I'd bought some of them then! All i recall is they were the original size, and silver. New production models were later red, beofre the mini-seriescame out. Only pedal thqat looked cool on a board were the 1990s/eearly 00s Roger Mayer 'rocket' shaped pedals. Not sure if those are still around? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ezbass Posted June 30, 2020 Share Posted June 30, 2020 On 26/06/2020 at 09:55, Jazz Club said: I have a Behringer Vintage Delay tucked away somewhere, it cost peanuts. However, it sounds great and does/did exactly what I wanted at the time. OK, the construction of these beasts, especially the Boss-alikes, isn't top notch, but if you want to get into FX and want to try a number out without breaking the bank, they are hard to beat. You could definitely gig them and, if you're careful not to throw them about, I can't why they wouldn't last a good while. If they do break, replacing them isn't really a huge financial burden. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EdwardMarlowe Posted July 2, 2020 Share Posted July 2, 2020 Certainly we're living in a golden age for cheap pedals to try.... When I started back in 91, there were a couple of very cheap and nasty pedals avaialble - Annyone remember Arion distorition pedals?, and then it was a jump up to DOD and Boss prices - Boss were pricey comparably for me then; DOD seemed to keep their prcies down over the years, but by 93 when I bought my first pedal - a EH-Sovtek Big Muff Pi - £45 was still a fair spend for someone not working full time (more than half a week's wages in my then student job!). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dad3353 Posted July 2, 2020 Share Posted July 2, 2020 23 minutes ago, EdwardMarlowe said: Certainly we're living in a golden age for cheap pedals to try... Just listen to the old fellow, harking back to 'the Good/Bad Old Days'..! In the '60s we had to make our own Fx with germanium transistors and zamac cases..! Tottenham Court Road was our source of ex-WWII chicken-head knobs, the electronic magazines carried articles on circuitry, and we longed for temperature-controlled soldering irons instead of lumps of hot copper..! Thems were the daze, indeed..! ... 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EdwardMarlowe Posted July 2, 2020 Share Posted July 2, 2020 And you try and tell that to the young people of today.... 1 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EliasMooseblaster Posted September 14, 2020 Share Posted September 14, 2020 On 02/07/2020 at 09:48, EdwardMarlowe said: Certainly we're living in a golden age for cheap pedals to try.... When I started back in 91, there were a couple of very cheap and nasty pedals avaialble - Annyone remember Arion distorition pedals?, and then it was a jump up to DOD and Boss prices - Boss were pricey comparably for me then; DOD seemed to keep their prcies down over the years, but by 93 when I bought my first pedal - a EH-Sovtek Big Muff Pi - £45 was still a fair spend for someone not working full time (more than half a week's wages in my then student job!). Good lord, I remember buying an Arion compressor back in the early 2000s. Construction seemed rugged enough, looking back, and quite a range of controls...but I seem to remember it being a little too easy to get unpleasant tones out of it. (I do attribute this largely to my being a bit inept with compressors, mind...) 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
