What causes the squealing noises when running a wah into a fuzz face?

[zombiwoof]

But didn't Jimi later use the silicon FF? Also with the wah. Seems to have worked for him. But he also worked like an animal with all that rather finicky gear to get those tones under control.

I didn't know he used silicon transistors in the FF circuit. But I do know he used the Roger Mayer Axis Fuzz which has silicon transistors.

And as for the buffer - i might as well just build a simple clean booster of some sort and put it inbetween the wah and fuzz in case i want more sweep? If i understood it correctly, there wouldn't be any difference if it's on-board on the wah or a seperate unit?

Like zombiwoof said, if you want to have a clean booster between the fuzz and wah then you have to integrate it in the wah. A permanent unit in front of the FF it will change how the FF sounds. The characteristic sound is caused by the interaction of the guitar's pickups and the FF. That will be lost if you permanently use a buffer. Or you would have to turn it off together with the wah. Then you might as well integrate it in the wah.

I personally like how it interacts with the wah. I wouldn't want to change that. The fuzz is too muffled sounding to work with a wah propery. If I want good interaction fuzz and wah I use the Colorsound Tonebender (like Tony Joe White).

Jimi didn't use the Roger Mayer Axis Fuzz, that wasn't around till after he was dead.  He used stock Fuzz Faces, which were modded by Mayer at some point to make them more useful to Jimi.  When the Fuzz Face started using silicon transistors, that's what he used.  The Band of Gypsys album is the silicon FF sound.  Mayer later put out his line of pedals, many of which used the modded circuits that he developed for Jimi, some have modifications that he developed later that he thought were improvements.  But in Jimi's time Mayer didn't sell any commercial pedals.

Al

[jasperoosthoek]

Jimi didn't use the Roger Mayer Axis Fuzz, that wasn't around till after he was dead.  He used stock Fuzz Faces, which were modded by Mayer at some point to make them more useful to Jimi.

Does that mean that the Axis Fuzz wasn't designed before Jimi's death? If it was designed before his death I see no reason why he didn't use it. He probably would be the first to use it.

Where did you get that information? Many people say that he did use the Axis on the Fillmore East concerts. Was it all a little lie from Roger to sell his series of pedals?

[zombiwoof]

Jimi didn't use the Roger Mayer Axis Fuzz, that wasn't around till after he was dead.  He used stock Fuzz Faces, which were modded by Mayer at some point to make them more useful to Jimi.

Does that mean that the Axis Fuzz wasn't designed before Jimi's death? If it was designed before his death I see no reason why he didn't use it. He probably would be the first to use it.

Where did you get that information? Many people say that he did use the Axis on the Fillmore East concerts. Was it all a little lie from Roger to sell his series of pedals?

Jimi used stock FF pedals, Roger Mayer did mods for Jimi and for other English musicians, so it is likely Jimi's Fuzz Faces incorporated at least some of the mods to the basic FF circuit that Roger uses in his later commercial versions of the Fuzz Face (Classic, Axis, etc.).  However, as I said, Mayer did not make commercial pedals until after Hendrix's death, this is common knowledge.  So, it is possible Hendrix's Fuzz Faces had different versions of Mayer's mods as he developed them, but he did not use the rocket-shaped Mayer pedals, they were not on the market back then.  Mayer was an electronic engineer that just started working with the English musicians, improving the commercial pedals that were on the market back then for them to make them more usable for stage use, he also developed his own designs for some of them (the Octavio/Octavia is one example, there were several different prototypes that Jimi used at different times as Mayer perfected the circuit).  If Jimi used what someone would call an Axis fuzz late in his career, it was basically a prototype for Mayer's later pedals, basically a modded Fuzz Face.

There are stories of Jimi going to guitar stores and going through boxes of Fuzz Faces to find a couple that sounded good.  There wasn't much attention to the biasing of the transistors in those pedals, so one would sound like crap and another would sound great.  You might buy a vintage Fuzz Face today that is in mint condition, for a lot of money, and it could be one of the crap-sounding ones.  It's only later that people investigated what made the good ones sound good, and developed the guidelines for transistor gains and biasing that we know about now.  You have to remember that in Hendrix's time, there weren't the hundreds of different guitar effects there are now, there were only a few fuzzes and a couple of other types of effects.  The Univibe was an effect made for organ that was supposed to simulate the bulky Leslie speakers, Jimi and a few other guys found out it worked for guitar, too, but it wasn't made for guitar use.  As for Fuzz Faces, the early ones used germanium transistors, when those were around that's what Jimi used, when the company that made Fuzz Faces changed to silicon transistors in the pedals, Jimi started using that version, because he just went out and purchased new equipment from guitar stores, his guitars were off-the-rack and so were his effects.  He was lucky to team up with Mayer, who had the knowledge to analyze the circuits of those pedals and improve on them for his clients.

Al

[wavley]

This stopped the squealing in my fuzz face http://www.muzique.com/lab/pickups.htm