It all started with a Colorsound Overdriver; I was 16, needed 'something' else and wandered in the world of pedals when I visisted Macaris in Denmark street, London. Since that pedal, my love for fuzz pedals was born. And yes, when the Colorsound is cranked, it is a very nice fuzz!!
I love fuzz pedals and had them all. From the Fuzz Face to the Big Muff. All are usuable in their own kind of way. All are different and all need a something else to function or sound good. I love the handling of the fuzz pedals; they aren't easy 'plug-and-play' pedals. You need to work with them. Together you make a result sounding good. Or bad, depending on the pedal.
When Ivo (Schot, bass player of Subterranean Street Society (SSS)) came to me for a custom Fuzz, I knew I could give him something good. Something wild. Something crazy. And that by venturing through the standards in fuzz-country and cherry pick my favourites. I gave him the Bleep fuzz.
Or well, gave him..... I designed this pedal for myself in 2012. I was in a noise band that needed to different kind of gain on bass. I loved this fuzz pedal in band format as it had enough low end to drive the band but also could cut through the mix when pushed and gave a very broad range of different fuzz tones. Still, it was as dynamic as guitar-designed fuzz pedals and won't turn dark so much. In 2013 I was still living in my students flat in Nijmegen and Ivo came over very often to get stuff fixed, to talk about a good tone and to borrow some equipment. Usually the stuff returned very quickly.
This fuzz pedal left my house in 2013 and never came back to me. Luckily I could reproduce the pedal for myself.
In 2022 we've started talking about building a second one as Ivo needed one for a smaller gigging board. The first one vanished in the post. The second one was close but not exactly the same. With pics we tried to understand why it sounded so off; this turned out to be the choice of parts. As this pedal is so dynamic, even a different brand of capacitors will give it another sound.
With some trial and error we got the essence going again. We joked about bringing the pedal to the market. A good seller in de merch store of the band. But the idea was planted.
The circuit
This fuzz pedal consists of ideas I combined when building a good sounding bass fuzz. I shared ideas and designs from a lot of pedals.
One of the main pedals I used as a bare essential was an old, unnamed Soviet fuzz I got for free when I boight some used pedals. The owner stated it didn't work anymore. I LOVED it! This unnamed fuzz pedal was a fuzz-wah pedal in a metal red enclosure that had three controls. All writing was in Cyrillic and the in and output was some sort of DIN jack. The effect was weird: the wah effect was always on and with the footswitch you could add a beautifull fuzz effect. Downsides: only worked on batteries, PNP setup and a very fragile construction.
I used this bare essential and added a new designed EQ section that works different then most known EQ designs. And the 'Tight' knob is basically a secondary gain knob that will add a different kind of gain sound to the effect by altering the internal BIAS of the pedal. The circuit is well protected inide the pedal and basically fool proof! An internal trimpot (not adjustable as it well hidden inside) just gave me a way to tune the pedal to the designed effect.
The sound
This pedal is a beauty when used with a bass guitar and only with a bass guitar it will reveal the full effect of this pedal. With guitar it still sounds great, but I notice that it glues easier with a bass guitar to the sound then with a guitar.
This pedal can be used in two ways; it has, as I call it, two different kind of faces:
- The vintage style fuzz
The pedal can sound like a vintage style bass fuzz. This effect can be achieved by placing the effect in front of a buffered pedal and, at best, as the first pedal in your chain. With this position the pedal will 'glue' itself to the pickups of the bass guitar and will produce the effect by altering the impedance of these pickups.
The effect is a vintage sounding low down muffled bass fuzz that can be compared to the low end of an EB like bass guitar with a fuzz pedal (EB-0F anyone??). The gain range is pretty wide and adjustable by the 'Gain' knob but the EQ is limited from extra low end to the more natural sound of the bass.
The 'Tight' knob adds gain in a different way making the pedal more velcro-y to gated sound fuzz and is interactive with the position of the 'Gain' knob. The '#!&$?' knob (I usually call this the 'more' knob) will add even more low end to the signal (so be carefull with your amps!). The output in this position will be louder compared to the more modern placement of the fuzz.
- The modern style fuzz
The pedal can sound like a more modern fuzz when it is placed after a buffer pedal. And yes, this is my own favourite place of this pedal to be.
The effect in this position is a more modern sounding fuzz. The best advantage is that the 'blanket' is lifted from the fuzz pedal so a more open and original sound is heard. You can clearly hear the character of the instrument and this character can be adjusted with the 'Tone' knob. This knob has now a wider range so next to extra low end the pedal can boost the highs and high mids much more. The gain range is much wider in this position whereas with low output instruments even clean boost like effects can be made. The 'Tight' knob still functions as a secondary gain knob but the effect is much more effective, as the range of this knob is also widened. The '#!&$?' knob now acts more like a gate and will ad a more gatey fuzz sound to the mix. The extra low end in this position vanishses due to the compression effect this pedal gets in this position.
All in all both versions are workeable and sound amazing. We (Ivo and me) use the effect after a buffer pedal. In the video below you can hear some samples of this pedal.
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