The Shtizu Fuzz

The fuzz pedal has been around for a long time. It has come and gone and come again in popularity. Sometimes you just get it until you get it.  But once you get it, it's magical.

I have been building my own pedals for 10 years.  I took all the readily available information from the interwebz and built the Shitzu fuzz.  It's small, hairy, and loud.

Essentially it's a Fuzz Face circuit with a few tweaks.  The first transistor is a lower gain transistor and the second is higher gain. Also, it has a potentiometer on the power supply so you can reduce the voltage starving it and creating those great sputtery fuzz sounds. It also has a poteniometer on the input

to reduce the signal to the first transistor to tailor the amount of signal hitting the first gain stage.  Lastly, I just omitted the fuzz control since I like it dimed anyways.  The volume control on your guitar or the control to limit the signal on the first gain stage more than give you enough control over the amount of fuzz

It's a simple build and a great sounding and versatile pedal.  Check out this demo below.

Fuzz, I just never got it, until I got it.

The below post is a re-post from one of my old blogs, enjoy.

Fuzz pedals have been around for more than 40 years now. They were the first attempt to get the sound of a cranked amplifier without having to crank the amplifier. They were/are crude, and dare I say, sometimes not very pleasant sounding. Now if you were a guitar player in the late 60's, this was all you had at your disposal. Technology has advanced, amplifiers are capable of ridiculous gain at moderate volumes, and there are a million other distortion devices. So why does the fuzz pedal still prevail.

I came up in the era of the shred guitarist. Van Halen, Randy Rhoades, Ygwie Malmsteen. The requirements for this type of playing was a high gain yet articulate and clear sound to allow all the fast picked notes to be heard. There was no room for the woolly, unpredictable sound of a fuzz pedal so I just never gave them much thought. They were yesterdays technology.

Fast forward 20 years. Shred is less prevalent. Grunge hit us all in the face. And the wall of sound was being driven by fuzz pedals. All of a sudden, the Big Muff, Fuzz Face, Tone Bender etc... were all over the place. I couldn't believe it. Why were these guys using old technology? Of course grunge has since passed but the fuzz pedal is still here. Holy crap.

I finally decided to look into this a little. As I was learning to build my own stompboxes I decided that I needed to dive head first into a fuzz pedal. I build a fuzz face variant. After i got it working, I plugged in and let it rip. What an experience (no pun intended). I realized that while crude and somewhat odd sounding at times, the overtones and singing qualities of the pedal made me take notice.

 There is a great range of sounds in a good fuzz pedal. Rolling back the volume yields a sweet overdrive with a hint of grit. Running it full out gets you a tone reminiscent of hell on a bad day. I finally got it.

If you have wondered about what all the fuss about fuzz is, go to your local music store and check one out. You may be surprised.

Scott

Fort Tejon Civil War Re-enactment

Fort Tejon hosted an authentic Civil War re-enactment over the Memorial Day weekend.  All participants were in full period authentic outfits and had complete Confederate and Union camps set up.

Fort Tejon on it's own is an awesome historic place and a great experience. Add all the dedicated re-en actors and vendors participating in this event and it made an great day for everyone.

Below are some pictures and video from my visit to this historic site on this day of remembrance.

 

Mesa Engineering Bottle Rocket Tube Overdrive

Mesa Engineering is famous for the Boogie branded Mark series amps as well as the massive sound of the Rectifier series.  The company has also recently released several pedals to compliment the various amplifiers they produce.

This is not Mesa's first foray into the pedal market.  In the 1990's and early 2000's Mesa released two tube driven pedals. The well known V-twin preamp pedal and the little brother and lesser known Bottle Rocket overdrive.

The V-1 Bottle Rocket is driven by two 12AX7 preamp tubes that create a wide range of overdrive and distortion tones.  This pedal is quite different than the high gain tones of the Mark series amps and crushing distortion of the Rectifier series.  This pedal thrives in the low to medium gain blues, rock, and classic heavy rock tones.

Below is a quick demo of the Bottle Rocket being run through a Fender Blues Jr.

Enjoy

Walker Homestead

I'm fortunate that the Santa Clarita Valley still has some history to be found. While it has built up over the past 20 years you can still find some remnants of what it used to be.

The Walker Family lived in Placerita Canyon in the early to mid 1900's. Frank walker built several homes there throughout the years and the remnants of a few as well as an entire cabin still exists.

I decided to take a trek down to what is left of what is referred to as the "Homestead" to see what was there.  It's a mild hike with some beautiful scenery as well as a really cool historical site.

The site today                             The site in 1910 




Enjoy the video...
















For more information on the Walker family as well as the entire history of the Santa Clarita Valley visit http://www.scvhistory.com/scvhistory/scvhistory.htm

Danelectro Pepperoni Phasor

Danelectro has had some great success with their pedals in the past decade.  Their small food themed pedals while not the sturdiest enclosures they are packed with sound.  I have purchased a few of these little gems and I think you get a lot of pedal for not a lot of money.

I decided to break out the Pepperoni Phasor and run it through it's paces. Its controls are super simple, just a speed knob.  Even I can handle that. Even if you only need this thing to get the EVH vibe going it's well worth it. Boba Fett says "Get one of these or I'll encase you in corbonite"

Check out the demo...

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Random Roadside

Throughout my various adventures I stumble upon some intersting things. Some of these things warrant an entire post or video and some are just an interesting side note on the adventure.  The video below documents some of these unique roadside oddities over the past few months

Enjoy