The general idea

Way back when, the earth cooled, the dinosaurs appeared, and I decided it was time to add a Fuzz box to my effects chain. I hadn't played a fuzz in a long time, and was yearning for that wooly, buzzy, sustain for days type of sound. So I went on the usual pilgrimage to Guitar Center to try out the stock mass-marketed assortment. Unsatisfied, I then proceeded to a couple of the local small shops, which had a variety of new and used fuzz boxes from different manufactures.

Resplendent Red

I tried the ZVex Fuzz Factory, a FuzzFace re-issue, a couple of the EHX units, a FullTone fuzz (the 1969 I think) and various other fuzz pedals. Most of them sounded good, but to get the versatility I wanted out of a fuzz pedal, I would have ended up buying multiple pedals, spending lots of money (not a behavior popular with my then wife) and mucking about with patch cables, tweaking, etc.

I returned from my Fuzz quest empty-handed. After some thinking, I realized that what I really wanted was the ability to try lots if different circuits, and add modifications at various levels. I wanted some of the classic pedals and the ability to switch mods on and off and to see how the different fuzz designs interact with each other.

Basically what I wanted was the ultimate fuzz tweaker toolkit, all in one monster pedal with lots of knobs, switches, meters and other twiddly bits. No commercial outfits have offerings that come close to what I wanted, so it sounded like a cool (and ambitious) DIY project.