Tym Mudderfuzzer

This is the new "shop only" fuzz to join the Mini Mud which is a series of pedals that are ONLY available by coming into the shop to buy. They are not available online. This may seem like a silly idea to some, but I still want to live in a world where people actually talk and experience that human interaction, especially when it comes to things as personal as musical equipment.

This pedal started off as an idea when I saw a pic on Instagram of an old 60's fuzz pedal called a "Tim's only Fuzzer Buzzer" which appears to be OEM version of several different branded fuzz pedals made by someone and sold under the names Orpheum Fuzz, Clark SS-600 and several others. When I saw the pic of the Tim's only fuzz I emailed Tone who does all my artwork and said "we've gotta do one of these?" 

 

The original two knob Fuzzer Buzzer looked like a fairly simple fuzz from pics I could find of the circuit ? I started with two of my favorite two knobers, the Buzzrite and the Tone Bender and worked out where I should go from there. I recently bought A LOT of NOS "tin can" BC108's for my Tym Benders and I like the gain/break up they get in the right circuit, but I was thinking this should be ........ different from all my other fuzzes so I started to work away from them and towards the three knob Foxey Lady but with a more "Tone Bender" flavour. 

 

The thing I love about the TB is the pick attack. I love a good Big Mud circuit but even the nicest (to my ears) don't have the percussive pick attack of those old Tone Benders. I wanted the thickness of the BM with the clarity and attack of the TB, so .........

I worked on a few circuits and settled on a fuzz section that I really liked using 3 BC 108's and 1 pair of germanium diodes on the middle transistor. I kept messing with values until I found a gain I liked without getting too muddy but enough to drive the diodes into clipping and still have heaps of volume. I really liked the fuzz tone but I've become really accustomed to a tone control on a fuzz so I kept going.

I ended up adding another BC 108 for a BM style tone stack (my favourite) but with much less mid scoop making it a 4 transistor circuit. I couldn't find much info on the three knob version of the original but grainy pics looked like it had a "passive" tone control, like a guitar tone pot, added to the existing two transistor circuit ? I do make fuzzes with passive tone controls but for shaping I much prefer the active control.

 

Tone sent over the artwork in silver, like the original and, as always, it looked great. A minute later he sent another file saying "this looks great too" with the artwork reversed and done with a black background. It did look very cool as well so I decided to ....... do both. They're the same pedal circuit wise, but I know what guitarists a like. What if silver didn't match the other pedals on their board ?

 

So, after a bit of mucking around the new shop fuzz is here. It's a high gain fuzz with more clarity and pick attack than any of my Big Muds and has a definite "ol' school" flavour using hand picked NOS BC 108's and germanium clipping, which only one other of my fuzzes has but this is a VERY different beast to the Tym Bender. It cleans up nicely, almost to an overdriven amp tone and reacts to volume adjustments on the guitar well. This is NOT a brute of a fuzz like some of the BM's and TB and not the "sausage sizzle" style of the Human Fly or Buzz Rite. It sits nicely in the middle which is where I wanted it all along.

Come in and say hi when you try one out. It'll ALWAYS be more fun than typing to someone or listening to "demo's" on the Tube !!

A SPECIAL MUD ....... KINDA

Back to blog