FUZZ

[andy]

This is one of those open 'opinion' posts really.

I thought it strange that Fuzz has not had much of a look in in the effects board- my two points about it:

1. Is it not peculiar that guitarists love the 'pure valve/tube signal path' (its actual existence another thread altogether) to the point of fetishism, and yet can quibble the finer points of all out transistor tone-sacrilege in the same hallowed whispers? A 'pure' late '60's plexi would hardly be complete without a pure transistor blob of fuzz pedal in front of it!!

2. My first experience of what one might call 'fuzz' was sending my guitar through a Tascam cassette tape 4 track, with the inputs, channel level, and master output cranked to the max, and the headphone out turned right down to taste. I liked that sound, but felt it was a bit of an 'out of bounds' kind of thing. When I split the signal through a stereo chorus(turned off), sent it to two channels, panned them hard left and right, and overloaded the thing as before, I was in a Fuzzout wonderland! Stereo tonal disruption from goodness knows where. I loved it, but felt it was too odd of a sound and far too labourious of a setup to ever use for anything serious... little did I know that so many of the the classic guitar tones where produced by similar means!

Anyhow, to the point! I have one dedicated fuzz pedal, and one booster which is, in my opinion, a low gain fuzz. I love the sound, but find it hard to put into normal musical useage.

My units are a Moen Fuzz Moo, and a Vox Distortion Booster- does anyone else love fuzz, despite its flying in the face of 'valves only' guitar opinion, and what pedal are you using?
Have you found serious uses for it beyond Doom Metal, or does it remain a dirty little secret like mine?
Will there ever be solos like those on 'Easy' by the Commodores or 'Summer Breeze' by the Isley Brothers released to the public again?
And how can something so bad be so good?

[ashcatlt]

I'm not completely sure where you're going here, but I can ramble about distortion for...

Well, I think there's two main reasons a solid state fuzz box sounds acceptable through a tube amp. They both happen to be lo-pass filters.

First, there's usually some tone shaping happening within the fuzz itself. This is usually accomplished by deliberate loading of the pickups, capacitor to ground somewhere along the signal path, or in the feedback path, or some combination thereof.

Then there's the amp, and especially the speaker. These things are deliberately engineered so as to fail at reproducing high frequencies. What was that about a mild fart?

The thing you did with the tascam likely put out a much extended harsh treble. There are definitely uses for that kind of thing. One of my pipe dreams is to find a way to put the channel strip out of the portastudio into a guitar pedal.

That sound can be heard on songs from NiN (just about everywhere), Nirvana (Stay Away), Wire (Chant). That's just off the top of my head.

The guy from Medicine based his entire guitar sound (and career) around a Tascam 4-track. I recall the swedish band Sportsguitar ran their guitars through a consumer-grade cassette deck and out to an amp*.

In my song "Tabitha," the two main rythm guitars are plugged into an overdriven ART tube pre through an overdriven DAT machine.

It's said that the folks in MBV play with the Boss HM-2. I've got a DOD Death Metal pedal that can make everything get completely abstract real quick. On top of that it self-oscillates in case you haven't yet completely allienated your audience.

Television (Marquee Moon) has decided I'm to stop typing now.



*Their guitars were all warped and scalloped and impossible to play. They were awesome!

[andy]

Jun 30, 2008 23:23:42 GMT -5 ashcatlt said:

I'm not completely sure where you're going here

You went pretty much where I was heading, actually! I just fancied opening up a conversation on Fuzz boxes really, but to be fair, reading back I did do it in a rather hap-hazard way.

That sound on 'Tabitha' is pretty massive too!

[ashcatlt]

If you heard the one linked from my website, that would be the live version. The doctrine of consuming nothing without alcohol in it before the gig, and the 10 years, make it difficult for me to recall what exactly I did there. I seem to remember having split my guitar through a couple pedal chains. The main crunch is probably from a Rat through a SansAmp. It's supplemented by running mults from all the instruments into the trigger inputs on my D4 drum module so they trigger drum sounds in rapid succession following the overall dynamics. That was probably distorted somehow as well.

This (3.5M mp3) is the album version with the DAT distortion.

[andy]

That is one freaked out distortion... ;D

And you make some pretty twisted music, man! How long ago did you make that album, and are you still playing similar stuff?

[ashcatlt]

I sent a PM a few days ago re: that question. I'm hoping you just haven't noticed, otherwise it scared you off...

Anyway, lately I've been using more amp (sim) based "natural" distortions. I used to have all kinds of different fuzz boxes, but they've all disappeared. I really have no idea where my Rat is... The Big Muff has been flakey lately, and is currently disassembled waiting for me to add a DC jack. That leaves the aforementioned Death Metal, and a Boss TurboFuzz which is actually two different fuzz boxes, plus a clean boost, in one pedal. I'm no snob by any means, and it works fairly well when I need that little extra bit of noise.

I've got all the parts for a Rat clone. Had it breadboarded and it sounded great. Unfortunately I got lost somewhere in the midst of laying it out on perf. Then I decided I need a couple switches to allow selection of various combinations of diodes, and... It's been sitting in a shoebox in the backseat of my car for about a year.

I've had some interesting results using the Moogerfooger Ring Modulator in place of overdrive/distortion. Set correctly, it gets kind of growly and nasty. One thing that's somewhat bothersome about this is that the modulator signal sometimes will come through and impart it's own tonality to the guitar. Like, if the modulator is playing something just flat of F#, and you're playing in C... I once split the guitar through a delay, with the delayed signal as the modulator and the dry signal as the carrier. So basically the last note I played was modulating the new note. That worked out pretty cool. One of these days I'll try it with a pitch-shifter in place of the delay. Might be fun with the Whammy pedal...

Distorted bass is a perpetual pain. Firstly, many commercial fuzz pedals have their coupling caps chosen to hi-pass out the lower subharmonics from the guitar signal. Of course, that's the area where the fundamentals live on a bass. On top of that, the harmonics "generated"* by the distortion often have the effect of shifting the whole thing up an octave. This isn't such a big deal, and is often desirable in a guitar, but it basically turns a bass into a guitar. Sometimes that's what I want... I've done some experiments with pitch-shifting both before and after the distortion, with mixed results. The problem with both of these methods seems to be that the "generated" harmonics are sufficiently random in both intensity and phase/timing as to smear and obscure the note. So it comes out pretty strange. Not always bad, though.

Of course, there's always the option of parrallel or crossover distortion, where you split the bass signal and only distort the higher frequencies. I don't have a good way to do this in the analog realm, though. Plus, it takes a lot of careful tweaking to get it back together sounding like one instrument.


* It's my contention that most forms of distortion don't actually generate harmonics so much as approximate or imply them. To generate harmonics requires a far more sophisticated circuit, either a pitch shift (which is usually done via digital time manipulation nowadays) or synthesis. What a fuzz box does is squash down or chop off the tops of the wave form, making the signal look more like a square wave. That square wave sounds like a set of harmonically related sines mixed together at certain relative levels, but... Well, it's a fine distinction and probably more my nuttiness than anything else.

[newey]

Ash-

What a fuzz box does is squash down or chop off the tops of the wave form, making the signal look more like a square wave. That square wave sounds like a set of harmonically related sines mixed together at certain relative levels, but... Well, it's a fine distinction and probably more my nuttiness than anything else.

Not nuttiness at all, it's a valid distinction.

As far as Andy's original topic- "Whatever happened to fuzz?", the reasons you don't hear it used much anymore may be more historical than anything.

The Fuzzbox was probably the first product specifically marketed for rock guitarists. I haven't googled the history and I disremember who first came out with one (Vox, maybe??), but this was in the mid 1960's. Wah pedals followed shortly thereafter.

Prior to that, the effects available were on your amp- reverb and tremolo. And those were there because C&W musicians wanted them, not because of rock and roll guys. The market for guitars and amps was, in terms of market share, a C&W market. A product made specifically for rock guitar wouldn't have moved many units off the shelves.

Then came 1964, and the Beatles, and all that changed. . .

A survey of American teenagers at one point in 1966 found an amazing statistic- 60% of them had been, or were in, a rock band!
I personally recall there being 3 bands on my 1-block street!

Of course, the novelty of being in a band soon wore off, and people realized it wasn't as easy as it looked to be a rock star. But, for the first time, marketers saw a market to be served. And there was the Fuzz, and then the Wah. By the late '60's, the floodgates had opened, and the aspiring guitarist could chose from a myriad of echoes, delays, phase shifters, distortion boxes. etc.

The lowly fuzz seemed, well, kinda old-fashioned, sort of "so last decade", by the 1970's, that it fell out of use. It did enjoy a brief resurgence with grunge, as Andy noted, precisely because it was retro-sounding.

Now, the market is all about rock music- and C&W players are scratching their heads trying to find an amp without a gain channel.

Just my theory, anyway . . .

[sumgai]

newey,

The Fuzzbox was probably the first product specifically marketed for rock guitarists.

That would be Gibson's Maestro-branded Fuzztone, Model FZ-1, first put out in 1962 or '63 (as reported in this WIKI article). My bandmate got one at least a year before the Stone's released Satisfaction, and he still has it!!! (As he also still has his first Strat, and his first Deluxe Reverb, and his...... makes me wanna puke. )

That same WIKI article credits Grady Martin (in Nashville) with "discovering" the neat sound of a fuzzily distorted guitar in 1960. Sorry, that distinction goes to Ike Turner, in 1951. And even that can be argued, but most sources accept the Turner episode as being the first intentionally distorted recording, via an amp with a damaged speaker, done specifically for the tonality it gave to the guitar. (The tune was Rocket 88, also considered by many to be the first rock-n-roll record of all time, well ahead of its time.)

Also, The Ventures used a custom-built unit on The 2000 Pound Bee, but that tune was recorded at the same time as their Surfing album (late summer of 1962), which also used it extensively. Thus we see that fuzziness was present well before the British Invasion.

The electrical discussions in that WIKI article are not very cogent, to say the least. Let's just leave it at "it's a good starting point, but Engineering students should not take it as gospel", and leave it at that.

HTH


sumgai

[newey]

Ok, I stand corrected on the timing- as I said I didn't google it. But even though the fuzz predates the British invasion, I'd be willing to bet they didn't sell very many in 1962 or 1963.

(The tune was Rocket 88, also considered by many to be the first rock-n-roll record of all time, well ahead of its time.)

I would also consider it so. Too bad Ike got more notoriety for the breakup of his marriage than for starting rock 'n roll.

The other contender for "first rock and roll record" often cited is Wynonie Harris' "There's Good Rockin' Tonight" (1947, I think . . .). But while it is probably the first use of "rocking", musically it's not really a rock 'n roll song, it's more of an R&B, jump blues kind of thing. So I think Ike can safely be credited.

Didn't know that bit about the blown speaker, though. I've often thought that younger guitarists don't really appreciate how much was accomplished with pretty primitive equipment- things are so much easier nowadays that we forget how tough it was to get "The Sound" with tiny amps, 4 channel recording, crappy PAs, etc.

[andy]

Sorry Ashcatlt,

I only spotted the PM yesterday, and read it before dashing off to a rehearsal! I'll check out the link when I've got a few moments more. I like the trucking stories- I wouldn't advise smoking any more animal parts, but I know the 'in-between stations' mess which just sounds like a racket in the day, but makes a kind of sense at 4am! And as a Brit, just the names of those states rolling by send a shiver down my spine. They have always seemed so epic and evocative (of something), even 'Nebraska'!

As for splitting a bass signal, that is the first reason I joined this forum- I wanted to send different pickups to separate outputs on separate circuits, and wanted to make sure I could ground it properly. I intended to have three pickups originally, but ended up using just two, and have a now cheapo P-bass with an original pickup for the clean lows, and a passive Musicman type one at the bridge for distorted duties. When recording some demos, I also split the drive sound to two Line 6 Pods, to get a stereo image, with each E.Q.'d differently to enhance the spread. I then mixed the clean signal in the centre, as a normal bass track, and panned the drive sounds hard left and right, in place of rhythm guitars. It was actually quite effective, and filled out a track with just one guitar and one bass part to sound much larger.(In fact I think one of those Myspace tracks is one of those demos). When recording the full tracks, the engineer wasn't really in the mindframe to work with the idea, and the producer decided that distorted bass was not really necessary in most places, so the stereo thing was lost and we reverted to overdubs, and the sound splitting I did do was used in such a way that I might as well just have used a distortion pedal in the main signal chain! Still, it kept me happy for a while, and I still have that bass for when the time comes- I must remember to post a photo of it when things get a bit quieter.

Sumgai, for all it's worth in these days of myth and mystery, I heard that Ike's amp was dropped as it came out of the van at the studio, some of the valves were damaged and had to be pulled out, hence the distorted tone. As there were no spare amps in the vicinity, Fuzz forced itself on Ike and his band! Just another Chinese Whisper for you.

Newey, How times change! C&W is now thought of a such a staid, 'back to roots' sort of a market, and yet early on those players were the only ones to go anywhere near the new-fangled 'planks' Fender was trying to push. And I'm still surprised that Fender don't make many one clean channel, solid state amps anymore. There are the Jazz King and Steel King, but they are 1x15" 200 watters!

[newey]

And I'm still surprised that Fender don't make many one clean channel, solid state amps anymore

Well, they're reissuing everything else they've ever produced, so we may see these someday. But the early Fender solid staters were from the CBS era. Remember the "Harvard"? I don't know that anyone is pining away for one of those.

And if I was a steel guitar player, I certainly wouldn't want to lug around a Steel King. They put wheels on for a reason!

There is also that ultralight Jazzmaster head, I've always wanted to try one but I've never seen one in the flesh, so to speak, but only in the catalogs.

[sumgai]

newey,

That new Jazzmaster amp is a thing of beauty, I'm here to tell you. You can read all the specs elsewhere, but the bottom line is, it's healthy!

Tone, power, lightweight, what's not to love? Oh yeah, the price! I hope Fender enjoys the profits from both of the units they've sold to date, cause no one else walking around with a guitar in his hands has the geld to spare for one of these babies. Now if gas were priced back down where it should be, maybe that'd be a different story.......... Hmmmm, cheap amp and drive to a gig, or expensive amp and be stuck at home........ Choices, choices, choices.





sumgai

[sumgai]

andy,

Depends on who you listen to.........

The way I've heard it, Ike's guitar player (Willie Kizart)'s amp had something go through the speaker cone while in transit (meaning, in the trunk of his car), and there was no time to repair it, nor any substitute amps available. The "dropped tube" story is attributed to the Rock and Roll Trio, on "The Train Kept A-Rollin'". However.........

The Trio, fronted by Johnny Burnette, didn't form until 1952, and didn't record and release that song until 1956. Even if the story is true, and there's no reason to doubt it, it falls far short of the "First Distorted Guitar recording" accolade. The reason the song gets the credit is that it was written and performed in 1951 by Tiny Bradshaw, an old-timey jazz musician who suffered health issues shortly thereafter, and never made it big in the emerging Rock and Roll genre.

BTW, the Rock and Roll Trio's guitar player was none other than Paul Burlison, the prototype for Carl Perkins, Scotty Moore and others to follow, first in Rockabilly, then straight Rock and Roll. But that's a subject for another day!


sumgai