“Some people never go crazy, What truly horrible lives they must live.”
-Charles Bukowski
Fuzz is the effect I find to be the most personal. Maybe it is because fuzz pedals are so varied in texture and intensity. Maybe it is because fuzz, especially great or terrible fuzz can seriously impact the way you play your instrument. Maybe it is because terrible and great fuzz is so subjective. I think a large part of the reason fuzz is so intensely personal is because most people have 2-3 60’s songs they associate with fuzz and who knows how they made those sounds originally. I mean, ‘Spirit in the Sky’ is virtually impossible to emulate with a stompbox.
Whatever the reason is, fuzz elicits a strong emotional response. There are plenty of guitarists who can live without it entirely and others who spend thousands searching for that magical ‘(I Can’t Get Me No) Satisfaction’ thing they have in their heads. My collection has stretched to a dozen or so and I still have fuzz pedals I salivate over. While, theoretically, the ‘Marshall Stack in a Box’ wars may end some day, there is no possibility of a perfect fuzz. The quest will never end.
When I started playing guitar back in 1997, fuzz was out of fashion as an effect. The Christmas 1996 Musician’s Friend catalog had a very limited selection. I remember the DOD 60’s Flashback Fuzz, the ubiquitous Fuzz Face reissue of questionable authenticity, and the exotic Expandora. Big Muffs were green and made in Russia. Boss made one, either the FZ-2 or FZ-3. There was the seductively named Voodoo Labs SuperFuzz and that was about it. Hell, Devi Ever makes more fuzzes than that with the word ‘Soda’ in the name. I came of age in the distortion era but the Russian Big Muff was my first pedal and I’ve obsessed over fuzz ever since.
All of which leads to the Bukowski FY-2 clone. As a frequenter of the wonderful I Love Fuzz forums, Officer Bukowski’s name popped up enough to be familiar. He was selling a one off fuzz, I was buying a fuzz. In the mail a few days later came this aqua box and a handwritten set of instructions. I mentioned my adoration of the Jesus and Mary Chain fuzz tone, which comes from an actual Shin-ei FY-2 fuzz, and Travis was kind enough to provide a setting in the vein of JAMC. I plugged it in, turned the side-mounted knobs, and stepped on it. Everything else is a blur.
The roots of the Bukowski version of the FY-2 are the same as the stock 60’s model, but he fixed two niggling issues: low volume and filtered output. Volume was solved by adding a Super Hard On circuit to boost the fuck out of the output. The original circuit has filters after the clipping section that filter the output and scoop the mids. Bukowski added a bypass pot that mixes between the original filtering and pure output. The results are electrifying. The morning after I used it the first time, I sent him a message comparing it to the sort of experience serpent handling Pentecostals experience in West Virginia. I felt like a divine or damned spirit was flowing through my body as I thrashed my Reverend Slingshot Jr. This is not a fuzz pedal to be used for lackadaisical Prince covers. This is fuzz to chop down mountains.
This particular pedal has a slightly unusual layout. The input and output jacks are perpendicular. The three control knobs are on one of the long sides. The footswitch is dead center. Oh, and it has the most goddamn intensely bright LED in the history of the world. The first time I stepped on it, the green light shone to the center of my being and changed me. I’m not sure if I played guitar or had a seizure. Maybe both. The paint is impeccable and beautiful. I love textured paint and the aqua color suits it well. It evokes vintage fuzz pedals without being pastiche.
With the ‘JAMC settings’ Travis provided me, I was instantly transported to ‘Just Like Honey’ as soon as I added the ghostly spring reverb from my Epiphone EA-22RVT. Chords clang, bassy and heavy. Single notes howl with a jagged voice, a sound that is almost vicious. There’s no mercy to be had from this iteration of the FY-2. Increasing the volume pushes it into that My Bloody Valentine territory of distortion so intense that it transcends musicality. With another pedal pushing it, the Bukowski FY-2 gets huge in way few fuzzes can without getting muddy. Pushed by my custom LPB-1, it gets a razor sharpness to the highs. With a Shoe Pedals Kung Fuzz, to be reviewed later, in front of it, the FY-2 summons up a mushroom cloud of fuzz. A turn of the Volume knob pushes my 12″ speaker into crazed vibration. After 12 o’clock, it is thunderous.
A ring modulator in front of it, I used a Ring Thing, elicits that ‘Paranoid’ alienness I crave. It overwhelmed the chorus and Rainbow Machine I put after it, but neither effect is noted for being fuzz friendly. In concert with the EA Parallel Universe, it gets slashed speaker nasty, with a bit of post-attack sag. With the Fuzzhugger AB-Synth, a cascade of gain follows, metallic and bordering on feedback.
The FY-2 has become my favorite fuzz over the course of the last week. It is exactly what I want a vintage style fuzz to be: distinct, loud, and dynamic. While the layout of my FY-2 makes it a bit difficult to fit on my pedal board, it is worth the effort. I cannot imagine playing shoegaze without it, now. When the next iteration of the Bukowski FY-2 is available, I will take it for a test drive. Until then, you can check out his wares in the Shark Tank.
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