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It does what now? The things I did to the Fuzz Face circuit to make the Meathead I done did to the Tone Bender Professional MKII circuit to make this, the Dark Flesh DF-71. It was a design I first used in 2009 when we did a pedal called the Fleshhead, and then revisited a handful of times since then with a slightly more vintage approach under the moniker Gravity Isolator. The Dark Flesh is for all intents and proposes is the original 2009 circuit, though with a few very subtle circuit refinements, presented in a somewhat more conservative and dated style.
Construction wise it takes elements from its roots, Veroboard mounted on a aluminium grounding bracket and the heavy use of shielded wiring. All components used in the circuit population are of high quality and are measured and tested individually for each particular transistor set-up. The transistors selected for the DF-71 are two Mullard OC82D and a single Mullard OC78. These devices give the DF-71 a fluid and energetic fuzz tone that has excellent instrument interaction with a favorable dynamic response. As with original concept for the Meathead for DF-71 has no means of control for the amount of fuzz tone produced, it is pre-set to maximum levels, that said the nature and circuit set-up do guarantee a fuzz tone that is both high in gain but more than palatable in its saturation levels. In other words, its not a wet or sticky out-of-control sounding device, it is brutish in character but not thug like.
The controls are simple but practical, switching and powering arrangements are basic but quite ample for the given design. There is no status LED or any means for external powering. Current consumption is minimal so a single PP3 cell is more than adequate and yields more favorable results in powering this circuit type. The two controls govern overall output volume, labelled as 'Master' and tone shaping for the produced fuzz tone, labelled 'Control'. Master being self explanatory, Control set at the 'bright' setting delivers high treble tones, the 'black' setting low heavy bass tone, balancing between the two gives a good degree of tone shaping offering the player a useful palette of colours.
