My fuzz face experiences were unfulfilling until I got my hands on a 1969 fuzz face in Cambridge, Massachusetts around 2006. It had a pair of TFK BC-108c silicon transistors in it. It took me exactly where I wanted to go. Tweak the knobs just right and it gave me a slight volume boost and based on where my guitar’s volume knob was I had grit to all out insanity on tap.
Later on I started trying the D.A.M. fuzz pedals (made by David Main in the UK) and I found a fuzz face that he made trying to mimic Jimi’s tone from the Band of Gypsies era. This fuzz became my No 1 fuzz very quickly, it sounded amazing and it was voiced in a very unique way that allowed it to cut through a mix much better than any other fuzz face I’ve used. Better yet it has sockets for the transistors and the bias resistor. So I have several transistors that I use all the time to experiment with and to change the sound of the fuzz. My go to transistors and the ones I have in the Fuzz Face in the photo is a matched Silicon pair that I got from Cesar Diaz. I’m not sure what kind they are because the labels are marked out by a sharpie… but I figure it adds to the mystique. I rehoused the circuit from the D.A.M. fuzz face into my vintage fuzz face’s enclosure (what can I say… I’m a whore for aesthetics). What does it sound like? Just listen to “Spanish Castle Magic” from Jimi Hendrix’s Isle of Wight performance. It nails it.
A final note of Jimi Hendrix’s tone: I NEVER hear people talking about this but Jimi’s UniVibe being bypassed was a huge part of his live tone. Hendrix was pummeling another tiny amplifier with fuzz before his Marshall and it adds character and texture to the guitar sound that as far as I know can’t be replicated by any UniVibe clones.
