In which Eric Johnson sets me straight

bhcarpenter

bhcarpenter

Well-known member
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So apparently it’s well known that EJ pushes the front of his Fuzz Face with a Tube Screamer? I had no idea. I’m guessing he never uses the FF without the TS activated.

Isn’t the Dover Drive a silicon Fuzz Face with a Zen Drive circuit after it? Out of curiosity, does anyone make a TS into a FF style circuit?
 
Back in his Tones/Ah Via Musicom/Austin City Limits era his 'dirty rhythm' chain was TS808 - Fuzz Face (Silicon) - MXR Flanger/Doubler (rack unit) - MXR Digital Time Delay (rack unit) - Dumble Steel String Singer 150W. It's pretty much the same nowadays except that the Steel String Singer is now owned by Carlos Santana, so he replaced that one with a Two Rock Traditional Clean.

The TS808 was never modded for true bypass and there was also no true bypass looper involved that would allow him to take the pedal out of the signal chain. There was an iteration of his pedalboard built by LA Sound Design a few years ago that did indeed involve a true bypass looper for the TS808, but when talking about his classic era board that looper did not exist yet.

Now hold your breath, he does indeed use the Fuzz Face with and without the TS808 activated. A classic example of his TS808 plus Fuzz Face sound is his song 'High Landrons'. Pushing the Fuzz Face with a TS808 gives that really nice cutting tone you hear on that song.

He tends to use the TS buffer only plus Fuzz Face sound in songs like his cover of "Are You Experienced?" (Austin City Limits '88), because he likes the "psychedelic" sound of the buffer messing with the Fuzz Face (quote from an interview that I'm currently too lazy to find). Naturally, this only works for him because he's playing super loud and knows how to control that whole mess created by the impedance mismatch.

Here's an isolated example of TS808 - Fuzz Face - Dumble Steel String Singer clone from an avid Eric Johnson fan:

 
I think the buffer in front of the FF is not gonna kill the tone, it just makes the FF way way brighter. He does use the Strat volume a lot afaik so maybe that’s how he compensates for that. He probably also uses the tone knob too.
 
This is totally off topic but I have a funny story about EJ. I think I've told it once or twice before. About 20 years ago when I worked at Bookpeople in Austin Eric came in. My buddy and coworker just happened to have his 808 in his locker before band practice. He brought it out to Eric to sign which he graciously did. But Eric made Jeff promise he wasn't going to turn around and put it on eBay. This was right when I started getting into pedal building and I am still jealous of Jeff.
 
giovanni said:
I think the buffer in front of the FF is not gonna kill the tone, it just makes the FF way way brighter. He does use the Strat volume a lot afaik so maybe that’s how he compensates for that. He probably also uses the tone knob too.
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Yeah, my understanding of this has always been that the classic "first in line" fuzzes have a very low input impedance, so they load the pickups of your guitar, which mellows down the frequency peaks (I forget the correct term), making it sound duller. But the fuzzes themselves are very bright and cutting so they balance out, since they were obviously designed for that.

With a buffer instead the guitar is not loaded, so you get the full tone of your guitar going into a very bright fuzz, which causes the "icepicky" tone as a result. But it doesn't necessarily "kill the tone", it's just very bright. Active pickups should act similarly.

I'm not sure if that changes the cleanup behavior too or not, I think without a buffer the impedance of the guitar also changes when you roll volume down so it might? But again, it's not like it's necessarily ruined, just different.

Hopefully someone can correct me if I got it wrong.
 
Fama said:
Yeah, my understanding of this has always been that the classic "first in line" fuzzes have a very low input impedance, so they load the pickups of your guitar, which mellows down the frequency peaks (I forget the correct term), making it sound duller. But the fuzzes themselves are very bright and cutting so they balance out, since they were obviously designed for that.

With a buffer instead the guitar is not loaded, so you get the full tone of your guitar going into a very bright fuzz, which causes the "icepicky" tone as a result. But it doesn't necessarily "kill the tone", it's just very bright. Active pickups should act similarly.

I'm not sure if that changes the cleanup behavior too or not, I think without a buffer the impedance of the guitar also changes when you roll volume down so it might? But again, it's not like it's necessarily ruined, just different.

Hopefully someone can correct me if I got it wrong.
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Yeah the volume cleanup doesn’t work the same way if there is a buffer in front of the fuzz because the fuzz doesn’t see the guitar’s high output impedance but the buffer’s very low output impedance. What I meant is that most old Strats do sound less bright with the volume down.
 
Doesn't the old TS808 have a 10k Output Impedance?:

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That's not very low with respect to coming before a Fuzz Face. Like @giovanni said though, you'll of course lose the cleanup, but not because of an impedance issue but rather losing the frequency specific roll-off you get from the RLC circuit in the guitar.

What's interesting is that like many other myths surrounding the Fuzz Face, many of it's most famous users don't seem to care all that much about volume cleanup. They mostly use it for leads, so it's an on/off effect.

In that sense, EJ's setup makes a lot of sense.
 
Big Monk said:
Doesn't the old TS808 have a 10k Output Impedance?:

View attachment 117178

That's not very low with respect to coming before a Fuzz Face. Like @giovanni said though, you'll of course lose the cleanup, but not because of an impedance issue but rather losing the frequency specific roll-off you get from the RLC circuit in the guitar.

What's interesting is that like many other myths surrounding the Fuzz Face, many of it's most famous users don't seem to care all that much about volume cleanup. They mostly use it for leads, so it's an on/off effect.

In that sense, EJ's setup makes a lot of sense.
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I thought EJ was famous for using the guitar volume to clean up the fuzz? Did I imagine that?
 
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