Your introduction to fuzz

[Lach]

Cool ! DOD was always the brand that I remember jumping out at me from all the adds in the American guitar mags I used to by at the time ( would have been late 80s / early 90s ) .....wish I still had those mags , I used to pour over them endlessly !

I remember them being featured a lot too! I never tried any other DODs that I recall but they were around a lot back then

[Lach]

I’m envious of people who still have their first guitar, amps, etc.. I read an interview with Ira Kaplin a while back where he talks about his 60’s Strat, Vibrolux, and Jazzmaster. All things he bought very early on in life and still has to this day. Same story with his RAT, he knows there’s newer pedals out there but his stuff works so he keeps on using it.

Yeah it never crossed my mind to sell them, luckily, and I certainly never could now, very sentimental! Of course there's a lot of other things I wish I hadn't sold in-between, but I'm glad I never touched the firsts

[daCod]

Yet Another Muff. NYC BMP was my first fuzz. traded it in for a boss SD-1 if memory serves me correct. i still have the wooden box it came in tho

however the muff wasnt my first pedal. that would be a snarling dogs tweed-e-dog WHICH i still have, along with my first guitar. 98 fender cyclone.
got'em from good old scotty's guitar in norfolk ne. spent a LOT of time hanging around that place in high school. both need some tlc. the tweedy needs a switch. should jump on that...

[Spook]

....Thinking about it, the first pedal i bought was an DOD too, an American metal.

[Doc Holliday]

First pedal I bought was a Boss Turbo overdrive from a good pal at High school.
He sold it me for £15 which was nice as he wanted a multi effects box. It was the early 90s.
Steve’s gone onto demonstrate Marshall amps across the world. Amazing guitar player.

[Doctor X]

The first Fuzz pedal I bought was a Keeley Fuzz Head in 2004 or 05. I wanted something that would sound a bit Jimi and I figured Fuzz Head sounded like Fuzz Face so thought I’d give it a go. It didn’t even sound like a Fuzz TBH, I bought a Sun Face soon after, then a Drag’n’fly a couple of years later.

[so&so]

In 1999 I bought a Boss FZ-3 and a Super Reverb to replace my Peavey Rage 158. I still have the Super Reverb. The FZ-3 went to my buddies house never to be seen again.

[Bert Ohlsson]

One of our Swedish groups - The Namelosers - had a technically gifted friend who made
fuzz-boxes to them in 1965. They were a tough band from Malmö in the south. I had
listened to them in my hometown once - and was impressed by the lead guitarists
loud sound from his Fender Bassman amp.



Keith Richard's guitar on Satisfaction had a great impact on me, but I liked Yardbirds even
more, and I loved Heart Full of Soul. When in Cambridge, England, summer 66, I happened
to see this peculiar and oblong device in a glass desk on the second floor of Miller's Music in
the town.

It didn't look any like the small square fuzz-boxes I'd seen so far in Sweden. But what else
could it be? With two guitar inputs (in Swedish: telejack), two controls and the name Tone Bender?
I had to ask if it actually was a Fuzz-box - and it was! So when my parents came a week or two
later I persuaded them to help me buy it. I think the price was £ 19 - but I'm not at all shure
about that.
Today, however, my Cambridge TB 1,5 is in good hands in Seattle!

[DucRyder]

My first fuzz was a Z. Vex spam can way back when they were new (1996 ?) Sounded pretty good, but I was way into more metallic sounds so sold it. Tried a Wells 5 o'clock shadow next (its a FF circuit) and it didn't stay around long either.

Many years later I found the hallowed halls of the DAM forum and found out about Tony Iommi's Treble Booster and started with a homemade one.... finally made my way up to Dave's B-13 and haven't looked back. Only other fuzz I use is the Buzzaround circuit.

[Space_Case]

Hey all, just strolling through the forum while listening to delightful gibberish I recorded today and thought I'd post (even though this hasn't had comment in a bit). It was really nice to think about how it started and how lucky my intro to fuzz was.

The first time I remember hearing a song and actually knew there was a fuzz was as a teenager when my Dad wanted to show me what was what and put on his Iron Butterfly record of In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida. I could feel the light-bulbs going off and it stuck with me to this day whenever I hear that song.

My first fuzz pedal was either one of two pedals (depending on how technical you want to get with it): an HBE Germania (two position toggle version with a soviet transistor) or a Catalinbread V8 Fuzz Tone Engine. The HBE was first and in looking back it was so much blind luck that such a wicked pedal would be the first pedal I'd ever own I still almost can't believe it.

I was living in Santa Cruz at the time and my sisters chipped in and bought me a gift card to Sylvan Music for my birthday which, because I had very little money at the time, pretty much set what I'd be able to afford. Being very much a Donnie and no Dude, I proceeded to go down to have a look without any idea of what I wanted or what to look for. I had no idea what a treble booster was (I'll get into why I'm mentioning this as a fuzz in a sec) or what a germanium transistor was. It happened to be in my price range, looked cool with sparkly purple paint (I remember thinking the mass produced pedals had a kinda lifeless vibe, though again I had no actual idea of what a good pedal might be), and then I plugged it in, realized it sounded absolutely killer and made sure I walked out with it. Btw the reason I think of it as a fuzz because on the two toggle switch the lo-fi setting is a traditional treble-booster and the hi-fi setting has much higher gain which reminds me of an upper mid-focused fuzz face.

The V8 Fuzz Tone was my second pedal when I was looking for something that could pick up from the HBE gain-wise, but still mids-forward (Because I was always too afraid to ask to try things out the only other fuzz I'd ever played had been an op-amp big muff at guitar center which both wasn't my cup of tea and didn't get helped by my anxiety + the guitar center experience). Also turns out the V8 was the first thing I ever ordered online and while it didn't get to the tonal level of the HBE it ended up being a great companion on my fuzz journey and certainly never dissuaded me from going further down the rabbit hole.

Anyway thanks for the trip down memory lane guys

Cheers,