Caught by The Fuzz
I like simple things, simple is good. I don’t go in for the pens that have four different colours, I’ll choose Ham & Cheese over Parma, Rocket & Swiss any day and I’ve never liked Prog Rock. So when I found this little orange box of nastiness online I couldn’t wait to try it out.
This is the Guyatone TZ2, or ‘The Fuzz’ as its rather self-assured silkscreened face says. It’s got a tiny footprint for someone used to the gargantuan hunks of tin that Electro Harmonix build. It’s housed in an all metal case with two plastic jacks and a supremely annoying rubber base which doubles as some sort of a gasket that keeps the battery and not-so-secret circuitry from spilling out.
A quick search in the archive section at the top of this page will bring you to my last article on fuzz a few months back when I got hold of a Danelectro Cool Cat Fuzz; which was a controversial clone of the uber-boutique Frantone Peachfuzz. The Guyatone is also a confirmed clone of the Univox Superfuzz. The Superfuzz is a Holy Grail pedal among the surprisingly huge fuzz fanatic community, also worthy of note is that it hasn’t been made for 25+ years and any units remaining today are pretty battle worn and leaky. That makes this pedal another ‘Holy Grail’ by proxy.
This simple as paint-by-numbers pedal has an On/Off swtich and two controls, the pretty standard Volume and the oddly named ‘Depth.’ ‘Depth? Why does a fuzz need a depth control?’ This ain’t no ordinary fuzz remember, a browse on Discofreq’s FX Database and Guyatone’s own discontinued product webpage bills this thing as a Fuzz, Octaver and Ring Modulator. I won’t go into the science behind it but they’re not wrong.
Plugging it in and switching it on waves of that famous Superfuzz sawtooth wave distortion hit me right between the eyebrows, my low output Stratocaster 50’s style pickup signal was morphed into raygun fuzztones. This pedal will not do The Isley Brothers or ‘Goodbye to Love’ by The Carpenters. It will however do an insane Jack White impression, a lavish palette of Mudhoney and then with the Depth set fully dimed an impressive and very moreish flavour of 60’s psych plus one octave splutters and whines. Couple this with the crazy almost atonal Dan Armstrong’s Green Ringer Ring Modulator-ish tones and you can bet your last shilling you’ve just happened on the world’s simplest multi-effect pedal.
Just maybe buy a noise gate too before it removes the wallpaper and paint from whatever room you happen to be in.
