| RFZ02 SKULL-FUZZ |
So it was the summer of 2019 and I was in the band(s) Murderock, 4th Street Rippers, The Sonic Dead, and Candy Apples and the Razorblades. Our guitarist "Frankie" gave me a box full of pedals to fix up/have, and one of them was this goofey home-made pedal that seemed to just add a little gain. I messed with it for awhile, but eventually I documented the circuit and rewired it into what we now know of as the "SkullFuzz".
Designing the Circuit The circuit started life as a BC517 based Fuzz I called "Simple Fuzz", which was to be my base-level, stock-type Fuzz pedal. Something sort of generic, no imposed notions, not wacky backstory about a guy in his garage (except myself), and no pretentiousness. Just simple, a Fuzz, that works and sounds good, thats it - 2 500K pots, a BC517 transistor, a handful of clipping diodes, resistors, and capacitors, and a power source, switched on and off through a footswitch - that's it. Maybe $30 in parts max. Problem was, when I wanted to put that circuit in this enclosure, I no longer had anymore BC517 Darlington Transistors left to work with, instead I had NPN BC547s. And I also had no more 500K pots as I had to use them up on some guitar repairs. So I had the 10K and 1K pots from the pedal, and then one 500K to work with. To add to the resource shortage, as usual, my simple design lead to experiments that found me adding more features again. So what once was going to be $5 in components, 2 pots, a switch, an LED, and and jacks was now going to add two more switches, one to lower power input, the other to change the input capacitor (again) so I could have a Disotriton or a Fuzz depending on my mood. When the circuit was done it sounded AWESOME. Exactly the Fuzz I always wanted. So this is my "signature" Fuzz circuit for actual, normal (well, what passes as normal for me), balls-to-the-wall, pure fuzztone, and it's 100% original, I did not copy it from a book, I did not copy it from another pedal, I did this pedal without references, remembering what I'd learned building the Fazz Fuzz, so it's a 100% original design. Controls & Sound The left eye controls volume, the right eye controls gain. Most of the time I just keep this thing dimed. The switch between the eyes is used for controlling power input - using a series of 2 1MEG resistors to cut the power down drastically. At high power it's a gated fuzz that borders on "synthy", at low power it's more distoorted and "open" sounding. So power consumption will probably be excellent on this (2023, can confirm, I've had the same bloody battery for 5 years in it, LOL). the switch in the nose cavity switches between distortion or fuzz modes by changing the input capacitor. One setting with the treble boost sounds more like distortion, the other more like a muddy Gavin Rossdale type Fuzz (Jazzmaster not included :P). I found it does GREAT for aping Ric Ocasek's rhythm guitar on the Treble Boost section, insta-Good-Times-Roll on single coils, and It' gets pretty close to my personal holy grail of tone from The Cars - that rhythm guitar sound from "Got A Lot on My Head" off Candy-O. |
