Ultimate Fuzz/ Distortion

[ollie]

I was thinking about this last night.

Do you think it would work/sound good if you combined 4 or 5 different fuzzes in one box? It would be fairly big but have them all seperate - i.e. not affecting one another and then mix them at the end with a simple inverting amp or something similar. That way you could really customize the sound and combine different tones etc

[petemoore]

  CA did when he released the QuadraFuzz...but I never got so far split-fuzz-mixing.
  Instead I split-effect, then run each chain to an amp. 
 

[Mark Hammer]

Mixing them would really only be more productive than simply having one fuzz with useful EQ if the individual fuzzes werre distinctive enough from each other, and the way/s in which you used them were distinctive enough.  I don't know what your experience has been, but at a certain point it starts to feel like they are ALL basically close relatives of a small handful of qualitative tones, with differences stemming from a bit of EQ here or there, and maybe a little more gain in this one or that one.  If I'm making pasta and sauce for my kid and his friends, and I'm using up all the odds and ends left in the various bags, will they be able to actually taste the "relative balance" of farfalle, rotini, penne, and fusilli?  I strongly doubt it, even though each of these is traditionally used as if it were a gastronomically unique element.

So, your first step in such an exercise is to identify for yourself what constitutes the 4 or 5 unique and distinctive "personalities" you want to pack into such a box.  They should be distinctive enough such that if you blend in a little more of this and a little less of that, you'd be able to notice the difference.

Now, having a bunch of different distortions to select between, as opposed to blending, is another matter.  There are all sorts of distortion modelling pedals out there that attempt to do exactly what you suggest, but in the digital domain.  I see nothing wrong with having a half dozen different classic distortions on tap, with a rotary switch to select between them.  Sometimes you want a Fuzz Face, and sometimes you want a Rat, and there is no reason to be forced to commit to either.

More prodtcive sometimes, is blending in a clean signal with this fuzz or that.

[petemoore]

  I did some split-blending...but for one thing I like FF...and between the routing issues to get non-buffered input to FF and all...
  I found what Mark said, sorta..
  Making one side have a much different sound, in particular the attack/sustain envelope, can produce a 'layered lasanga' sound...you only get the 'crusty cheese taste' when you 'cut into the top layer' examples and descripts:
  If one side clean the other side hardclipped or double clipped or compressor-distortion, the attack sounds so big on the clean side, it sounds like a big clean punch [with a background fizz-distort], which is then followed by sustaining distortion, ~no clean, resulting in a big difference between attack and sustain portions of the envelope, every time the note is attack/sustained, a sequence of more complex tonal events follows.
  You'ld think the other way around works good..and it did [with comp on the clean], ...is more of a straight distorto-clean mix, less 'difference' to the pick attack tone.
 

[kvb]

Rather than mixing different fuzz (squarewave) sounds, mixing different types of distortion, along with the clean signal could give good results.

For instance, Squarewave mixed with Crossover mixed with Rectified (octave), and don't forget some clean.

Different pedals going into a simple mixer would work. Or build the monster - check out the splitter blend, paralooper schemes.

I think that it is also important to mention that the different types beeing mixed need to have tonal variations.
A scooped fuzz with a mid-humped clean. The treble could be boosted here or there, etc.
Roll the treble off of a bass fuzz and mix that wth a May queen - or whatever - That'd probably be pretty lush and searing.

[Mark Hammer]

+1

The things you mix need to be different enough from each other that they can be heard.

[ollie]

Yeah defiantly understand. I was going to try and hunt around to find 4 or 5 distinctive home brew distortions and feed them in with a clean signal so the balance could really be customized

I was thinking about how, when mixing a song, you only double track things when you have different tones so they sound much fuller and thought that this might be able to emulate that kind of thing

Overall it'll have quite a few knobs - the controls for each effect, volumes for each channel going into the mixer, and maybe some kind of overall EQ (but that might be overkill)

I wouldn't really want to have a 'multi-effects' kind of setup with switchable effects because that's not what I'm trying to achieve

Another possible option is to have it so I can change the modules but let's not run before I can walk


EDIT:

the fuzz's I'm thinking of using at this point are:

Highway 89
Smash Drive
Microdrive
Dr. Boogie
Swollen Pickle
May Queen II

I think there's a nice amount of variation in there but I'm not sure about having both the smash drive and the hwy 89 yet

[earthtonesaudio]

If it was my project I'd want the mixer separate.  That way if you decide you would rather switch one of the fuzzes for something else, no problem.  Like a delay or phaser etc.

Of course the "giant fuzz" pedal has its own unique appeal...

[ollie]

hmm, i s'pose you're right but then I'd have to get hold of enclosures for a few different pedals and I would have to split the signal to start with which means another independent box

I'll keep it in mind - at the moment it's all kind of vague, was just an idea i had

[WGTP]

The Boss OS-2 is a version of that.  It has a SD-1 (diodes in feedback loop) on one side of the blend pot and a DS-1 (diodes to ground) on the other.  To further make the 2 sound different, the DS-1 has a notch filter.  The SD-1 is naturally mid-rangey and by combining the 2 with the Color Pot, not only does it pan between the 2 types of distortion, it also boosts or cuts the midrange.  Slick idea.  There are a zillion possible combinations.  How about a Bazz Fuss on one side and a Tube Screamer on the other.   

How about using a Joy Stick to "blend" 4 distoritons.   

[ollie]

Cool, I never knew there was a commercial pedal that did a similar kind of thing. Will check out the audio samples on the Boss site - thanks for that

The joystick wouldn't really work for what I had in mind for this BUT i'm also planning to sort out an old beat up guitar that I have some time and was thinking of stripping a joystick from a game cube game pad and attaching it, somehow, to some kind inbuilt modulation circuit so it would be sort of like a kaos pad but different

[ollie]

this is the kind of setup i was thinking of, seems a bit simple but if it works, never mind hehe

[kvb]

your clean blender needs to be a circuit as well, like a booster.
A pot parallel with all of the other circuits is just going to be a feedback loop.
Even if it was buffered on both ends, it is likely that you wouldn't be able to hear the clean because it would not be as strong/ loud as the distortions.

[ollie]

Ok, I might add the beginners project booster to the clean then so it can be heard as well

Thanks

[petemoore]

DC blocking caps on each Dist output might be a good idea. There is no DC blocking between the outputs and the last OA input.