A nice 2-distortion combo - well, maybe "nice" isn't the word

[Mark Hammer]

I spent much of the holiday weekend sick in bed at the in-laws, but I did not know the true meaning of sick until this evening when I finally boxed and fired up something I had been working on for a while (the circuits were easy, but debugging it and finding the nonfunctional toggle was hard).   Some 40 years ago, I was playing in a band, and was loaned two of the guitar-mounted Muff Fuzz units for an evening, and decided to plug them in series.  I think the cinder-block hallways of that high school are still echoing.    I figured it was time to resurrect that.

I call it the Grand Muffti (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Mufti), because of its rather "compelling" and authoritative tone, and compilation of a great many classic sounds.  It houses a pair of fuzzes; the first is a modified Muff Fuzz (the discrete version not the later dual op-amp one), and the other is a modded Shin-Ei FY-2.  It's a 6-knob, two toggle, single stomp affair in a 125-C chassis.  A little crowded, but workable.  It offers a very broad range or distorted tones and personalities in one box.

The Muff Fuzz is very similar to the original, shown on the GGG site, but has variable gain and an SWTC, in addition to the volume pot on the original.  I used a pair of 2N5088s.  The variable gain is adapted from the classic Fuzz Face topography, and is simply a 5k pot and 10uf cap from the Q2 collector to ground, in parallel with the existing emitter resistor.  The original used a fixed 2k7 emitter resistor and the Double-Muff uses a 3k3.  I went with the 3k3 to permit lower minimum gain.  The SWTC is a 10k pot with a 1k resistor just ahead of it, and a 22n cap from wiper to ground.  Everything else is pretty much stock.  It offers a nice range of tone from very warm growl, of the sort maybe Daniel Lanois might use for rhythm with a tremolo, to classic sustaining Fuzz Face sounds with bite, to violin-like tones when the SWTC is pulled back.  Like the Scrambler Plus I put together several years ago (which housed a modified Distortion+ in series with an Ampeg Scrambler in the same box), the intent was to use the Muff Fuzz as a "front end" for the FY-2. 

The FY-2 was pretty much stock, with the exception of a 100k Fuzz control, to permit greater variation in tone, and a 2k pot from the .1uf cap-to-ground in the midscoop filter section, to vary the depth of the scoop; essentially a mid-lift control.  Since the Fuzz control on the FY-2 essentially pans between an initial gain stage, and the output of a second cascaded gain stage, it allows me to pan between the FY-2 fuzz tone, and something a little closer to a dirty boost (though I should probably figure out how to reduce the gain of that first stage to get greater tonal variation). 

Though the order is fixed, the toggles allow me to have just the Muff Fuzz, just the FY-2, or both in series, with the stomp bypassing the entire thing.  The range of tones from the Muff Fuzz, and the panning function of the FY-2 Fuzz control, lets me dial in gentler grind from the Muff, and use the mid-scoop of the FY-2 to suck some of the mids away, if I want, or keep them all.  If I push the FY-2 with a hot and bright signal from the MUff Fuzz, I get the "implosion" that the FY-2 does so nicely when you hit it with a hot signal.  Somewhere in there, I was also able to get Neil Young's sonic collapse of "My My, Hey Hey".

This is a very nice "natural pairing" (or unholy alliance, depending on how you set it).  The number of controls and toggle might suggest putting it in a 1590BB if one was so inclined.  Once I track down a nasty intermittent, and feel confident enough to record some samples I'll post them.

[glops]

I would love to hear some samples of that thing!  Great name.  I was building FY2's for friends awhile back and love slamming the FY2 will various other
fuzzies.