Guess I'm a Fuzz Guy Now
Many years ago (late 00s?), I bought a Big Muff Pi, the iconic, big box version. It was big, it was unruly, it was good enough for the music I thought I was going to write. I ended up writing a lot but recording none of it, not able to find a band (and if I'm being honest, not having the courage to put myself out there and really look for one). I put it away. I played a lot of classical guitar. It was a solid decade and a half before I felt the itch again.
The last year I've been playing around with using my guitar for making drone and ambient music, but I've also been getting into drives and fuzz. Call it a mid-life crisis. Drives-wise, I think I've found what I'm looking for (a combination of the EHX Soul Food and Boss BD-2), but for fuzz, the field feels more wide open. My Muff is loose and aggressive; I've got a TC Rusty Fuzz, which feels a lot tighter (it's apparently based off the Boss FZ-3). And a month ago, I got the Earthquaker Devices Hoof, a pedal based loosely off Dan Auerbach's Green Russian Muff. It's a silicon-germanium fuzz, with four knobs: volume, tone, shift, and fuzz.
I've been waiting to really play it a lot, because my amp's having issues: after almost 20 years of not-too-heavy playing, the tubes are starting to go, and I need to order some new preamp tubes. But until I do, I've been enjoying it even with the imperfect crackles added by the dead tube, running my guitar straight into the Hoof and then into the amp. No pedalboard, no complexity, just fuzz. I'd started off with it on my pedalboard, after my tuner and drives, but then I started wondering if the Hoof was one of those fuzzes that needed to go first, and seeing only repeated-internet-wisdom online, I decided to email EQD. They replied within an hour or so!
It always helps to keep your fuzz pedals at the beginning of your signal chain. In almost all cases, a fuzz pedal will sound better when your guitar is plugged directly into it. If you have a large pedal board, and "sandwich" your board with buffers, place the first buffer after your fuzz pedal to maintain the desired response characteristics.
Okay. Since then, I've been plugging into the Hoof first. I've been enjoying it the most with the "Shift" knob counter-clockwise (added mids, basically), and fuzz pretty high, for a biting, aggressive fuzz tone. But the other day, I thought I'd dial it back a bit. Rolled back the Fuzz knob to almost the minimum, but not quite; played on my Strat's neck pickup; and it was gorgeous, gorgeous. The absolute perfect slightly-driven tone, the kind of thing you dream about, finding that tone that makes you sit up and go, "oh, OH!"
I've been looking at open mics and open jams around my city. That's the easy part. At some point I have to fight my basic instincts and just get up and go. Take in a few. Then take my Strat. I'm approaching the halfway point of my life. Time to get moving.