The Faoladh (F-wale-ah) Fuzz is named after the Irish legends of the werewolf. Distinct from other regions’ myths in that the Faoladh were fierce protectors of women and children: noble and wise and not mindless animals. However, I chose the name because the pedal really is a fuzzy beast! |
How it sounds
The phone mic doesn’t really do the differences justice, but it’ll give you an idea!
Where it came from
If you read my post about the switcher, this is based on the pedal that first got me thinking about what was possible.
The Shin-EI FY-2 Companion Fuzz was a pedal from the sixties that had some real grit. And I fell in love with the sound which I discovered here and used it as a jumping off point for the Faoladh.
The Faoladh has gone through many incarnations and this version has pretty much all the mods in one pedal and, yes, there are probably too many for one little box, but you may get a sense of my excitement 🙂
Schematic
Feel free to use or adapt the schematic above. I’d appreciate a shout out if you do (and a link to this page too?) But most of all if you do use it – let me know, I’d be tickled all shades of pink
One note, is that there should be a cap before SW1A Nastier – not sure why it’s not in the schematic (I’m pretty sure I put one in the pedal itself…)
Some Notes
The core of the pedal is very similar to the FY-2 (roughly from C1 to before R22). I used transistors with higher hfe, so the surrounding resistors had to be tweaked to get the voltages back in order
I also changed how the Fuzz pot worked. Instead of sending parts of Q2’s output back to Q1, it now adds Q2’s output incrementally to Q1, which allows for a much more dramatic variation in tone
The Scoop is the ubiquitous Mark Hammer mod for the FY-2
The tone is a variation on Jack Orman’s Stupidly Wonderful Tone Control V3 (SWTC3)
U1B & U2B are non-inverting buffers
U1A (and the surrounding components) is basically the boost section from the Tubescreamer family (a friend liked the sound of a TS in front of the Faoladh and wondered if it could be placed permanently in the circuit.
Sounds simple.
It was not!)
So, the Bite knob allows a mids boost to be dialled in right at the beginning
Growl, is a pregain knob. It determines how hard the transistors are driven
U2A is a gain makeup section. It also helps drive the Warm/Cold/Nasty section. Which basically chooses between output capacitors to filter the low end and a third option to add some clipping diodes before the output buffer
The Nastier section is an octave-up circuit to add even more grit.
In a spirit of honesty, the only reason I added the Nasty & Nastier switches was that I had made the enclosure for an earlier version, and the options were there still, and I didn’t want to make another one 🙂
Unfortunately, the old way of getting the Nasty and Nastier settings no longer worked, so I had to find a new way. I’m pretty glad I did – the octave-up is a circuit snippet I’m particularly proud of.
And above all, I still get a kick out of the eyes!