Ibanez - No. 84 / Double Sound

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 I got this pedal in for some TLC. The battery connector was ripped off and the owner wanted a DC jack to feed it with an adapter.



The Ibanez No. 84 / Double Sound is the combination of a fuzz-like pedal with a wah wah pedal into one enclosure. It really stands out from other pedals by having two sliders on the side as potmeters. Two footswitches located really close to the threadle control the fuzz effect and one footswitch underneath the threadle controls the wah wah effect. 









Three versions were produced: 

  • Version 1 had two seperate PCB's inside the big enclosure. The fuzz effect has no octave function and is made with germanium diodes
  • Version 2 has one big PCB inside. The fuzz effect is different compared to the version 1
  • Version 3 looks like V2 but has a LED

I'll keep this post on the V1 as that one came to my door. When a version 2 or 3 gets by, I'll add that to this post.

The circuit

When opened up this pedal you are greeted by two individual PCB's that are loaded with beautifull (full size) parts. The fuzz section is an Ibanez No. 83 fuzz pedal (also on a No. 83 fuzz PCB) (info on the No. 83 fuzz) and the wah is an Ibanez No. 93 Blubber wah (also on the Blubber wah PCB) (info on the No. 93 Blubber wah).






This pedal was luckily already traced by the great Dirk Hendrik (in this post of FSB you can find the schematic or it can be found here directly).

The sound

I was expecting something else; an Ibanez fuzz pedal with sliders and a 'Tone switch' should sound like an octave fuzz, right? 

Wrong! This pedal has no octave effect but is a nice straightforward sounding fuzz pedal. It has a limited range in fuzz sounds (in gain) but has two very distinct fuzz sound.
  • One is very middy and clear which beautifully cuts through the mix
  • One is a very low mids sound with a lot of bass and treble repsonses. 

I really dig the middy sound. It adds a really nice, dry feeling to the sound with a gain / fuzz response that is different then other, more known fuzz pedals. It is a pretty gainy fuzz but the overall feeling is that the repsonse is really clear and clean. It does respond well to the volume knob setting and on the higher notes it really can make a guitar sing. No tone knob doesn't bother me that much, although I'd like an extra knob to remove some of the more higher frequencies.

A very nice addition to any fuzz rig and an good alternative to any OD / fuzz pedal. 

The wah sounds amazing and true to a more vintage type of wah pedal. The wah sound is really clear, vintage sounding and has a character that is really nice to use in a bandformat. 

Combining both gives some sort of tone knob to the fuzz sound. And really opens up the sound of the pedal. It's wild, it's nice, it's a great pedal!







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