What are some songs containing the definitive, classic fuzz effect? I'm looking for examples of tones and playing techniques to emulate.
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>Subject: Fuzz examples
>Very Classic Fuzz:
>I call it the "violin/clarinet with balls" tone.
>Artist(s): Cream
>Album: Disraeli Gears
>Cut: "We're going wrong"
>Method: Pre-70's Arbiter Fuzz Face with the fuzz control backed off slightly, Danelectro, LesPaul, or ES-335 guitar with neck pickup volume backed off to 8 or 9, strings plucked close over the neck pickup or fretboard, all amped loud enough for good sustain, the final sound sent through a plate reverb, I think.
By "final sound" - do you mean that the mic'd speaker cabinet is sent through a plate reverb, or that a plate reverb inside the amp is used, thus reverb before power tube saturation?
>The problem is that the Fuzz Face needs to be hand-selected since neither the early transistor fabricators nor the creator, Roger Mayer, did much quality control. Roger Mayer's "Classic Fuzz" and Dunlop's Fuzz Face reissues suffer the same quality problems as the original.
>Modern fuzzface work-alikes have rigorous hand-selection of components plus assorted circuit tweaks to achieve this peculiar sonic holy grail. Names to conjure with are:
>Because of the labor intensive component selection, they cost double+ that of any BOSS/DOD/etc. fuzz box. About 1 in 6 AC128/NKT275 transistors make the grade.
>Finally, Eric Johnson is said to have used the Fulltone '69 on the recently-released Venus Isle CD, and I suspect he used a selected antique Fuzz Face on the title track of _Ah_Via_Musicom_, but his predilection for the Chandler Tube Driver pedal makes sonic identification problematic.
I like the Chandler Tube Driver pedal -- it's a good middle-of-the-road type of distortion; not an overdrive (for example, Ibanez Tube Screamer) or a metal (for example, Boss Metal Zone) type of distortion. But I have not compared very many distortion pedals. Contrary to the assumptions of some readers, I am not an authority on the sound of particular models of equipment, except for the 50 or so pieces of equipment which I have owned and experimented with.
detritus at ix.netcom.com(Lord Valve) wrote:
>In <549scu$mjs at nntp1.best.com> Michael at amptone.com (Michael)
>writes:
>>
>>What are some songs containing the definitive, classic fuzz effect?
>I'm looking for examples of tones and playing techniques to emulate.
>>
>How about "Spirit in the Sky?" Lousy tune, but that's sure some
>balls-to-the wall fuzz...and, of course, "Satisfaction," Stones
>version...and didn't "Ride, Captain, Ride" have some fuzzy guitar on
>it?
> Fat Willie
> detritus at ix.netcom.com
> (Lord Valve)
Thanks. Spirit in the Sky is related required listening, but it's an exception: it's done with a torn speaker! I didn't think that it also used a fuzz box. Then there's Crosstown Traffic, emulating fuzz with a kazoo -- but again, that might use a fuzz box in addition to using an unusual approach.
Michael at amptone.com (Michael) wrote:
>What are some songs containing the definitive, classic fuzz effect? I'm
>looking for examples of tones and playing techniques to emulate.
Thee Hypnotics -- Come Down Heavy. 1989, in the style of Blue Cheer.
Yes, Revolution is a good example.
Someone made a great observation: the consoles in the 60s were *tube* consoles, so if you overdrove a channel, you were overdriving a preamp tube. You also bypass the speaker low-pass filtering effect this way. This is similar to my original guitar rig: a 1980 Big Muff "Pie" directly into a home stereo. All the people resisting my anti-direct-into-the-console thread take note: I started playing years ago with the most fuzzy direct-into-the-console tone you've ever heard.
I've gotten some interesting results from driving a series of eq's into distortion, using no "distortion box". All sources of distortion are fair. I want 20 distortion boxes intercombined with random eq curves, driving speakers... mix them all up and see what bizarre overdrive tones are created. Speaker distortion, choking preamp tubes, diodes, saturated power tubes, mic clipping, 4-separate-band distortion, BAD clipping happening in the WRONG places.
However, one type of distortion I have no interest in is echo before distortion. This sounds just plain garbled.
I heard a Buffalo Springfield song with a great fuzztone lead the other night. I think we're going to be hearing a lot more fuzz, even as we hear more and more distinctly power-tube type saturation. Exploring distortion character is great fun.
Neil Young's formula seems to be an octaver with power-stage saturation, with no preamp distortion. GP Oct 92 p 47: synopsis: No amp gain [that is, no preamp distortion]. Fender Deluxe bought for $50 in 1967. Gretsch guitar, hollow or semi, so it shook with feedback. Along with the power-stage saturation, uses a Mutron octave divider with MXR analog delay before the octave divider. The routing is important. [Jeez that would crud out the sound, placing an echo before an overdriven power stage. I guess he is here focusing on avoiding crappiness from doing octave-into-echo.] A chain of 6 fx. Volume level of the amp at 10 1/2 to 12 [which is max]. Thus:
Gibson shown in photo
Octaver
Delay [default?]
Cranked Fender Deluxe tube-amp with no preamp distortion.
That's it! A lower-octave with clear signal, slamming the amp, would sound even more gravelly and crusty than turning up the bass on an eq before the amp.
Sonic Youth (same issue): crank, always crank the amp. We have all used Rat, Turbo-Rat pedals. Marshall stack, blackface Fender Super Reverb and Concert, MESA Boogie Mark III -- since we got the latter, I use the channel switching rather than Rat pedal. Orange head for the real overdriven stuff - rattier than Marshall, but not in a low-tech sense. For certain things, man, there's nothing that can touch that [Orange] amp -- it's God's gift to distortion.
Also, Sonic Youth is a main story in Guitar Player Aug 1991.
George Lynch [?] supposedly sounds completely liquid and fluid.
Henry Kaiser: "But every year I learn that all of my past preconceptions are wrong. I used to think preamp distortion was where it's at, but lately I've been thinking more about power amp distortion. I normally use a Dumble amp with a bunch of effects in the loop plus extra distortion boxes and compressors. But the other day I just plugged a Strat straight into a 4x10 THD amp, and I found that I was playing with a lot more dynamics and tonal variety, even with my usual amount of distortion. Also, I find that lately I've just been giving awya all the old fuzztones I used to collect. I'm going to keep my Chandler Tube Driver [I had this and liked it -- Michael] and my Pete Cornish fuzz, but that's about it."
I posted about Jimi at Woodstock. I also mentioned the mid-60s to mid-70s as a good source of tube amp Tone samples -- for example, "The End" by the Doors; it's got a subtle clean yet edge-of-breakup tone, generated by the later processing stages (power tube interacting with hard-driven guitar speaker). Grunge and Shred tones do not highlight tube tone well; edge-of-breakup is sonically rich and intriguing. It's subtle; you have to listen for it. Use a compressor or overdrive pedal (Tube Screamer) to hover around that critical dynamic level where subtle wrinkling (rather than definite breakup) occurs.
>For example, I dusted off the 1969 album "Chicago Transit Authority" by the
>Jazz-Rock group Chicago. It's nice to hear a group that was less than two
>years together play so tightly. Also check the guitarist's, the late Terry
>Kath, solo cut in which he takes a Stratocaster plugs into a tube Bogen PA
>amplifier and then feeds it in to his Dual Showman [cab?]. The cut sounds like
>Van Halen meets a Harley-Davidson but a little less polish than Eddy. And
>this was ten years before the first Van Halen album!
> Mark Amundson,
The track is "Free Form Guitar". I always liked the guitar focus of that track. But I never thought his tone was very good -- I think it *sounds* like a PA amp. I would have set up that amp with eq before the input, in addition to tone knobs that the PA has after the preamp tubes (which I suppose are distorting). Compare Caspar Van Brotzman's tone, it's similar.
Caspar Brotzmann Massaker interview/article 1 1/2 pages Guitar Player magazine Feb 1994 page 27.
Albums: Tribe, Black Axis, Der Abend Der Schwarzen Folklore, Koksofen. Marshall 100 watt plexi's mid 1960s.
The song "Choke" by Z (Dweezil Zappa) has an awesome 6-minute cranked-amp lead. Check out Z album, What the Hell Was I Thinking? I didn't like their album Animal Noises at all -- I expected a killer guitar album, but it was stoopid and not guitar oriented. Very disappointing. But I know he can totally rock and get authoritative cranked-amp tone. GP Sep 1991 has a full Dweezil article. Discography, as far as I can tell:
1. 12" single: My Mother Is a Space Cadet / Crunchy Water
2. Album: Havin' a Bad Day, on Barking Pumpkin records
3. Album: Confessions.
4. His cover of the song Stayin' Alive also has guitarists Warren DiMartini, Zakk Wylde, and Steve Lukather -- Ozzy was going to sing on that, but his label wouldn't let him.
5. Animal Noises, or some such title (lame, lame - the albums notes portray him as upholding the highest musical standards and rejecting everyone else as musically inferior -- but this album is the world's lamest, totally disappointing, not even a guitar album at all)
6. What the Hell Was I Thinking? [I hope this refers to the previous extremely lame album]
Chris Duarte -- Texas Sugar / Strat Magick has great cranked-amp tone. His latest, I think it's Whirlwind Headwhack or something, is supposed to be as Toneful but more far-out, not just firmly within the cliched Texas blues genre.
The best wah-and-amp-tone ever recorded: Stevie Ray Vaughn, "Let the Good Times Roll".
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