Guardians of the analog
Well-known member
- Build Rating
While this is not my first rodeo with this circuit, it is my first time having it fully useable. When @blackhatboojum asked me one day what's something I wanted to build, I said an FZ-3 that didn't have a massive volume drop. I built the Aion version around a year ago, and while the pedal sounds awesome, in stock form the pedal suffers from a volume drop after the tone stack. I talked to Chuck about it before and he felt the best way to deal with it was what I suspected, a BMP gain recovery stage. Clinton and I discussed the circuit and he crushed it with this board.
The FZ-3 is the spiritual successor to the legendary FZ-2. It's a mashup of ideas from the big three of fuzz...the FF, TB and BMP. The circuit has a sound somewhere between a FF and TB and the modified BMP tone stack can get you between a bender on one end and a fuzzrite of sorts on the other. The range of the gain pot is pretty wide as well going from lower gain gain fuzz, MKII bender and biting fuzzrite with a tinge of upper octave maxed out. The BMP gain recovery stage we used gives around 13db of gain so now the pedal can get above unity and more, driving the input of your amp should you want it. Also, by tweaking the values of the caps in this stage you can add a lot of low end for bass. The jfet input buffer means that it plays well with wah pedals and buffers in front of it.
For the enclosure, I used my design from my previous build because it was perfect IMO. Winked silver enclosure and UV print. I only had to move things around ever so slightly and Clinton's layout is super clean, and as a side affects, this version has a lower noise floor that my Aion build. For the demo, I tried to keep it simple and give a good middle of the road representation of what it sounds like. The guitars are double tracked, no EQ and only light compression. The left channel the fuzz is at 1 o'clock and tone at 11 o'clock. In the right channel the fuzz and tone are both at noon. Thanks again to Clinton for the great sounding fuzz.
! Looks great, sounds great, and I’m glad you’re enjoying it.
Clinton did all the real work
