Fuzzessesses, Buffinks, and Waaaazzzz ...... whuddup?

[lowvolt]

Forgive my lousy attempt at humor there in the title.

I'm getting into fuzzes and wahs.  Whats up with the issue of buffers with wahs and fizzes?  Erm ... fuzzes.  Something about a buffer is needed between the wah and the fuzz if the wah is placed before the fuzz, but only if the fuzz is a germanium-based fuzz .... or .... huh?

Does this also run into bypassing one or the other as well .. meaning do one or both need to have buffered bypass?

Corn-Fuse-Ed.

Thanks mangs.

[kaycee]

The traditional Fuzz Face, germanium or silicon has a low input impedance, this quality gives it its characteristic interaction with the guitar pick-ups via the guitar volume pot. As you turn up the volume pot and increase the signal the FF fuzz builds in intensity, so you can go from an overdriven sound to a saturated sustained fuzz at the twist of a knob.

The output impedance is okay, so you can run whatever you like after the fuzz and keep the FF clean-up effect, so FF first and wah second and alls good. If you put the FF after the wah the low input impedance of the fuzz 'blinds' the wah and you find that it no longer sweeps.

The solution is to provide a high impedance between the wah out and the FF in, done by inserting a buffer either on the fuzz input or wah output. Now when you do this you mostly lose the FF ability to clean-up and to saturate, essentially you are turning your FF into a Tonebender. Its easy enough to put a switchable buffer on the input of your FF, or indeed build a stand alone buffer to insert at your discretion anywhere in the chain. Do a search for Aquataurs' buffered fuzz face for a good implication of this.

Why put the FF after the wah then? because it sounds different that way, better? Thats for your ears to judge.

[1878]

This is something I've been wondering about recently. I've built a Whipple wah with a switchable output buffer. Haven't decided which version of the fuzz face to build yet though. I prefer the wah before fuzz/distortion, but it's so long since I've used a wah I'll probably find my mind changing a few times before I've settled.

Is it just the 'volume roll-off' that's lost by using a buffer or are there any other issues ?? If so, I don't mind 'cos I never use my volume control.

[slacker]

As has already been said the fuzz face has a low input impedance so it basically "tone sucks" if you plug your guitar straight in reducing treble. If you use a buffer in front you loose this effect so it will sound brighter and harsher. This doesn't matter if you're only using the buffer after a wah because the extra treble is probably a good thing.
If you're adding the buffer to the fuzz face you could probably add a simple tone control to the buffer to roll off some treble if you wanted to, or try Jack Orman's pickup simulator which is designed to make a fuzz face sound like you're plugging your guitar straight in.

[pinkjimiphoton]

the wah first will make the fuzzface sound crappy if you use a buffer.

you'll get more mileage with a 50k pot wired in between the output of the wah board and the input to the output of the switch.

any, i mean ANY kind of buffer before a fuzzface will ruin the ability of the fuzz to interact with the guitar...if all you want is "fuzz", you're good, but if you want to be able to play the fuzz for tone, it won't work.

best bet is guitar>fuzz>wah>distortion/overdrive>whatever. wah sounds best after fuzz, with the fuzz driving it anyways, and you still get the more subtle weeping of having the wah tickle and overdrive or distortion pedal.

fuzz before wah, you can dictate the tone that hits the wah, the level of distortion, and have a gazillion times more dynamics than trying to put a wah before the fuzz.

that said, part of why hendrix sounded like hendrix, was using the oscillation caused by putting the wah first to give the illusion of chords and background melodies...you can sweep the oscillation from the interaction of the two units while playing, and get background sounds very similar...

IF you're jimi hendrix. good luck widdat part!!

seems to me, most of jimi's wah stuff on the records was either into a cleanish amp, or definitely had fuzz before it. remember, a lot of it was enhancing the distortion of them dimed plexis.

end of the day tho, believe it or don't, i tried every single buffer on the internet between my wah and fuzzface, and none of them did what people said they would...at least not at stage volume levels.

the best bet was a 50k pot. i added one to my wah, with a switch, so i can dial it in a little bit if i have to (use the wah first) or take it out completely (normal use).
a slight tweak of the 50k pot, and you can find the resistance that makes them play nicely, tho it's not perfect, it's at least as good as any of the buffers.

my opinion (shared by some), tho ymmv.

[lowvolt]

Hey folks.  Thanks for the replies.  SOOPER interesting stuff here!  I would most certainly have fuddup the buffer thing.  I would have instinctively put an impedance buffer between the wah and the fuzz (wah first, fuzz second).  And, it would have suck-ola'd in a big way and turned my FF into a gated fuzz sound (yuk).

Is the input impedance high enough on the FF to keep passive guitars happy, or is the magic combo boofer->FF->wah?

Sorry for my lack of participation, I ended up having to leave town for a few days ... a less-than-good family issue.

Great help ... thanks again.  

[ashcat_lt]

At least part of what makes the FF sound the way it does is that it makes passive pickups very unhappy!  It loads them down and sucks tone and passes nothing remotely resembling treble.  Less treble in means less nasty high harmonics out, and you get that creamy fuzz sound that makes people happy.  After all, are you trying to please your pickups or your ears?

[lowvolt]

At least part of what makes the FF sound the way it does is that it makes passive pickups very unhappy!  It loads them down and sucks tone and passes nothing remotely resembling treble.  Less treble in means less nasty high harmonics out, and you get that creamy fuzz sound that makes people happy.  After all, are you trying to please your pickups or your ears?

Well, many times pleasing the pickups is necessary to please the ears.

Thanks for the reply, I understand.

[pinkjimiphoton]

Hey folks.  Thanks for the replies.  SOOPER interesting stuff here!  I would most certainly have fuddup the buffer thing.  I would have instinctively put an impedance buffer between the wah and the fuzz (wah first, fuzz second).  And, it would have suck-ola'd in a big way and turned my FF into a gated fuzz sound (yuk).

Is the input impedance high enough on the FF to keep passive guitars happy, or is the magic combo boofer->FF->wah?

Sorry for my lack of participation, I ended up having to leave town for a few days ... a less-than-good family issue.

Great help ... thanks again.  

any active device or buffer before a fuzzface will ruin it's tone. fuzzface first.

if the fuzzface is too wooly/bassy, turn the guitar down a little bit.

[dthurstan]

I have also been looking into this recently (http://www.diystompboxes.com/smfforum/index.php?topic=100390).
A buffer in front of FF increases the treble content and I get more hum and buzz, also makes it sound a little like a tonebender (not as much sustain though). I put a buffered pedal (DS-1) in TB loop in front of silicon and germanium FF's, switching the buffered pedal in/out comparing the differences. With a Wah > buffer > FF, I found the sweep improves but not as much as I thought it would.

In the topic referenced above I was trying to use the darlington buffer found on the input of modern crybabies. I cut some traces and moved it to the output of the wah directly after the pot, adding a 4.7uF cap on the output of the buffer. I got a lot more noise and buzz than using a buffered pedal. I have now completely removed the buffer.

I'll probably go with wah > buffered distortion/overdrive, with fuzz in front.

If you have a buffered pedal (boss, ibanez, digitech, etc) you could try it out for yourself.

[pinkjimiphoton]

yah, the "buffer will fix it" thing is a myth.

it WILL work ONLY if you want the guitar all the way up and total fuzz. but even then, the fuzz will suffer, and you'll lose the touch response and volume control interfacing.

try the 50k pot trick. it isn't perfect, but doesn't mess with your tone like a buffer will.

the best bet, really, is fuzz>>wah>> everything else.

btw...you can stack a couple fuzzes before the wah if need be...some play real well together, others won't. but if they're TB, and you only use one at a time, you should be fine.

like i've said repeatedly...i've tried every dang buffer i could find on the net, and the small resistance works as good or better in every case i've tried.

i have a box full of buffer daughter boards...when i need one for something, i just grab one out of the box.

[lowvolt]

So far all that has been discussed is the Fuzz Face.  What about using a wah after something different?

1.)  BMP and it's variants.

2.) Tech 21 Boost Fuzz - this thing seems to be getting good speaks made of it.  Kingman's video of it was favorable as well.

Oh and btw ... Happy New Year 2013.   

[pinkjimiphoton]

happy new years to you too.

you can put any distortion before a wah, but you probably won't like it as much.

distortions/overdrives seem to like to be "tickled" by a wah more than drive it.

if you put a wah after them, you get an extremely exagerated "quack" out of the wah. you may love it, you may hate it.
it's a valid sound on it's own, but it's not subtle....more talkbox than wah wah.

when i was younger, wah always came after dirt. now i prefer it before. by varying the resonant peak going into a dirt box, you can ride the dirt's resonant frequencies and it sounds great.

apples and oranges. let your ears decide.

fuzz goes before wah only cuz they don't play well together the other way, and fuzz into wah is more controllable, the wah and the fuzz both interact with the guitar better. it's more subtle than a distortion into a wah, just as a wah into distortion is more subtle. go figure.

[ashcat_lt]

Yeah, distortion into wah always sounds to me too much like a synth than a guitar.  It can sometimes be cool if you're going to distort it again after the wah - even if that just means amp overdrive.

Pedals with high in-Z and/or input buffers will react essentially the same no matter what order you put them.  That is to say that unlike the FF types which depend on interaction with the passive pickups for its frequency response, these others have their essential functions isolated from the outside world and will have the same response given any reasonable input.  There will still the normal order-based differences.  Adding harmonics and then filtering is always different from filtering and then adding harmonics.

[lowvolt]

Very interesting stuff!  It's funny how a little old resonant band pass filter (the wah) has such different responses and different results with various distorters.

Thanks tons for the information.  More stuff added to my notebook. 

I'll be dedicating this wah setup to a guitar that I've repurposed into a slide-only instrument.  It will be a sortof stringed-synth in many ways.  I mean I gotta give that Line 6 M13 something to do!  I've got a Keeley Mello wah that I've had since 2007 and have yet to use it, and a Zakk Wylde Cry Baby as well.  I'm thinking seriously about getting a BYOC wah kit, it seems to have a lot of potential and a lot of provisions to attempt various modifications.  The ZWCB is a VERY resonant wah, I'd like to try to figure out "where the virtual resonance control is" in the basic CB wah circuit.  Much fun ahead of me!

Thanks again.  All very helpful, and very educating stuff here.

[1878]

I built a bc108 fuzz face with an external 10k bias pot a couple of days ago to test this out properly. No matter what I did, the fuzz sounded better before the wah. There wasn't any 'life' to the fuzz when it was placed after.

On another note, I've never owned a fuzz face & I must admit to being very surprised with it. A lot more gain than I remember from my first (only) underwhelming encounter with one.

[lowvolt]

So I guess the deal is to use a buffered input if the FF is NOT being used, then A/B over to an UNbuffered input when the FF is being used.  Essentially thinking of the FF as the buffer in a signal chain.  So the trick might be an unbuffered A/B switcher so that when the FF/Wah sound is desired the guitar's signal is shot straight to the FF/Wah, then when done with all of that A/B back to the buffered input chain to go on with business as usual.

OR .... just put the FF/Wah stuff in front of whatever buffered thing one may have (Tuner?  Other?).  Or does the buffered thingy just totally goof with the FF/Wah combo even if it's AFTER that pair?  That doesn't seem right .... I mean if I stuck a phaser after the FF/Wah combo that wouldn't screw them up, or would it?  Hmmm ... this all has me thinking.

So .... if the FF doesn't like buffers, how does it deal with active guitars?

And again, it seems all there is is talk about using the Fuzz Face with a wah.  What of other fuzz units?  BMP?  Or that Tech 21 Boost Fuzz?

[ashcat_lt]

This seems to kind of be going around in circles.

There are two issues here:

1)  How does the impedance of source an load affect these pedals

2) The overall sound of repurcussions of effect order - how one process affects the other

The answer to these have pretty much been covered.

1)  FF typed pedals (those with Low-Z transistor inputs) want to be connected directly to passive pickups.  Any active stage between them will give results which are generally considered undesirable.  Most wahs are buffered on either end so their filter action is essentially the same no matter what the source and load look like.

2)  Wah after distortion will filter out all the higher harmonics from the distortion and sound generally unnatural and synthy.  It sounds to me like a "studio effect".  Distortion after wah generates harmonic multiplies above the cutoff frequency and sounds more natural.  It sounds more like the wah is an intrinsic part of the guitar sound itself.

HTH

[lowvolt]

Well then, I guess this conversation is just over.

Thuh End.