Octave & Fuzz

I wanted a 'Fuzz-Box" When i was young I bought a Univox "Super Fuzz" not knowing it was the preferred EFX pedal to most major Rock guitarists. I've watch videos of The Who on stage and I can see Townshend has the pedal no ton the floor,but up high and easy to adjust. I bought it because I could get the sounds of Black Sabbath with it and it worked great on my Bass. It could growl or it could buzz and do anything inbetween. I sold my pedal two years ago and got $550.00 for it. I think I paid $45 back in 1976So there I was regretting not having that pedal and finding out that nothing else sounded like it no matter how much the listing said it did. I bought an expensive unit to a friend as a gift and it claimed to be identical to the Super Fuzz and to even have more tonel adjustments. It didn't sound anything like the Univox. Now keep in mind I am talking about a "Fuzz" and not distortion or overdrive. Those EFX sound different than a Fuzz Box. Two weeks ago I cam across this on Amazon and after thinking about it bought something else that was actually a little bit more money. I never buy the cheapest product even when broke. Somehow it never arrived and Amazon sent me a refund very promptly. Then I went back to this one. I switched over to "Dogpile" my search engine and read about the pedal and listened to several videos of people demonstrating it. So I went back to Amazon and bought it for a very low price. - Thank you Amazon. It arrived the next day - thank you Amazon Prime - and after popping in a battery I tried it out. I have a new Les Paul copy I am about to upgrade so I plugged it in and played. I messed with the settings a lot and it sounded like crap. Then I turned the last knob almost all the way to the left and it sounded great! From there I tuned the over knobs to get a sound I loved. I ran it through a compressor and delay and this thing blew my freakin' mind. It was every adjective I can think of in a superlative vein. It was fantastic, magnificent, awesome, incredible and on and on. I couldn't put the guitar down. I was amazed to know that what I was hearing from my amp/cabinet was me. I sounded as if I could play. I was playing runs from Deep Purple and I sounded like the records. I was playing Who and Zeppelin, I suck at Page so i went back to Deep Purple and even played some Humble Pie. The sounds were all there! All of my favorite British guitarists were inside my amplifier. Then I began to play "Good bye to Jane" and discovered how much fun it is to blaze through my favorite Slade songs. I can't remember having so much fun. It sounds sweet when playing light solos or leads without changing settings, I simply changed how i played the notes and the box did the rest. Some boxes have one sound and you get it louder or softer but you still get the same sound. Not with this little purple wonder. The variations in tone are never ending between changing the pedal settings and changing the pick up positions and tone knobs on the guitar. In fact I think they ought to sell this pedal with every LP copy and they'd never have a complaint. It is nice that this pedal is so inexpensive. It appears to me made well. The off gives a completely quiet pedal by-pass. I believe it could take some rough handling at practice or packing up after a gig. The tag on it says "British" and it certainly earns the right to than name. It enabled me to sound just like all my favorite 60-s to 70's British rock guitarists.I can't recommend this pedal enough if that is the sound you want. maybe in 40 years people will be paying absurd amounts to buy one of these original pedals. You never can tell.

I have been gigging with a Strymon Iridium for 3 years. Of course, it is awesome and can toggle between 3 amps and 9 cabs. It occurred to me recently that if it failed at a gig, I would have no choice but to go directly to the board and have a degraded tone. So, I started looking for an inexpensive back-up to put in my gig bag. My thought was to buy this, test at home, and return if I didn't like it. The tone is incredible. Takes pedals just as well as the Iridium. Build quality is solid; pots feel great; no added noise that I can detect.Who is this for? It certainly makes a great back-up in the way I am using it. At 1/10th the price of an Iridium or UA amp simulator, it could be for the budget conscious. Or it could be for someone who is incredulous and doesn't want to give up their tube amp until they are convinced.I think that this pedal gets me at least 90% of the tone of my actual Fender Deluxe Reverb. But bear in mind when you compare something like the Joyo to an actual amp, ask yourself, "what kind of speaker am I routing this to?" People often forget that the actual speaker you are listening to is a large portion of the sound you are perceiving.One other note. While I rate the Joyo at ~90% of actual tube tone, that's based on listening to my guitar solo. No other instruments. Not mixed -- just guitar. If you actually gig or play along with tracks, the differences will be even less. Add drive, modulated effects, delay and reverb and you will have a very hard time nitpicking this pedal.

Perhaps my review criterion is too high; I own an original A/DA Flanger, but it’s needs to be fixed. Not a simple fix, as the repair will be expensive, the original chip is highly desirable, so finding a credible repair shop is difficult. A/DA flangers are THE benchmark for analog flangers, there’s nothing like them; they do beautiful, lush slow and fast flanging, Leslie rotary speaker sounds, short delay chorusing, generate distinctive sound effects. I mainly was hoping for solid flanging and Leslie sounds, but this just doesn’t enter the game. It’s passable. A truly great flanger run through a quality amp creates lush, swirling, ambient atmosphere on a clean tone, and with a distorted tone, has throaty, pulsing, thickness that fills in, creates mood, richness. The Leslie emulation is where a flanger can really shine with fast or slow sweep, creating a distinctive, howling, pulsing overdrive or distortion sound that feels alive, pulses with the music. I also used my A/DA for sound effect generation, that allowed for explosions, UFO effects, helicopter sounds, pink noise sweeps that sounded submarine. This flanger is okay for clean flanging, a pseudo Leslie for overdrive. It’s just not the same animal, a one or two trick pony.