Hirti
Well-known member
- Build Rating
I still have about 10 pedals that I built last year that still need build reports, so here we go! I already built one of these ages ago when a vero layout for it was first released in something like 2010 or 2011. I was super confused by its sound and sold it again. Here's a picture of my old build (sadly I can't find a gutshot anymore)
For some reason I thought about this pedal again last year and decided to build it again. The Toupee/Merkin is a tweaked Fuzzrite with an additional stage at the output. It's a super nasty, "spatty spaghetti western fuzz sound" kind of thing - "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida" is a good example. With certain texture settings (higher end of the knob) you can even get some kind of octave-up sounds.
It's a very unique-sounding fuzz, not something that will find a permanent place on my pedalboard, but it's definitely a nice to have fuzz for certain sounds. It's also a fuzz that reacts quite well to rolling down the volume knob on your guitar, and it sounds quite different when using humbuckers vs. single coils.
Build wise it's a very easy build and I once again used the smd relay bypass board by @szukalski.
For the artwork, I wanted something based on my older build of it, so something colorful. One of my favorite bands is City & Colour, and their songs often have amazing fuzz tones (like here at 3:55, though I don't know if they ever used a Fuzzrite). Then I remembered their record Little Hell, which features a picture of a very colorful Dutch tulip field. I started Googling and found a cool picture that I vectorized in Illustrator and had printed on a matte gray sand enclosure by Tayda. Came out really nice and I am very, very happy with the results!
For some reason I thought about this pedal again last year and decided to build it again. The Toupee/Merkin is a tweaked Fuzzrite with an additional stage at the output. It's a super nasty, "spatty spaghetti western fuzz sound" kind of thing - "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida" is a good example. With certain texture settings (higher end of the knob) you can even get some kind of octave-up sounds.
It's a very unique-sounding fuzz, not something that will find a permanent place on my pedalboard, but it's definitely a nice to have fuzz for certain sounds. It's also a fuzz that reacts quite well to rolling down the volume knob on your guitar, and it sounds quite different when using humbuckers vs. single coils.
Build wise it's a very easy build and I once again used the smd relay bypass board by @szukalski.
For the artwork, I wanted something based on my older build of it, so something colorful. One of my favorite bands is City & Colour, and their songs often have amazing fuzz tones (like here at 3:55, though I don't know if they ever used a Fuzzrite). Then I remembered their record Little Hell, which features a picture of a very colorful Dutch tulip field. I started Googling and found a cool picture that I vectorized in Illustrator and had printed on a matte gray sand enclosure by Tayda. Came out really nice and I am very, very happy with the results!
