Well, here's something for the nerds.
While I was looking for more 15th anniversary pedals I decided to look into a Guild Foxey Lady from the sixties which was either a Mosrite Fuzzrite in two knob form or an EH "Triangle" era BM in three, both of which I make so ...............
I emailed Tone (from Guitar Nerd) for artwork and he emailed back 10 minutes later all excited saying “no-one owns the name Foxey Lady !!!” What the ..... ? Apparently it lapsed and no-one owns the trademark or rights to that name anymore.
Guild was the original owner but they are just a shadow of the company they were in the 60's when they had these made for them. The name Guild is now owned by Fender and they of course don't make pedals like this.
Tone wanted me to buy the name and make it "official" but I said I'm not the sort of person who would sue anyone if they started making them or using the name, which apart from nostalgia is really the only reason to "own" a name, so I just decided to make a “Foxey Lady”.
After doing a bunch of research on the three knob Foxey and coming up with many conflicting and apposing circuits, which is VERY common in the old EH world, I got a friend of mine in the US who owns a bunch of vintage BM's to take some detailed pics of an original Foxey Lady PCB that he thought was his "best"
After toing and froing with "what's written on that cap" and "what colour bands are on that resistor" and referring to the many circuits out there on the net, I came up with a circuit I really liked.
It is very different to my current Triangle with more gain but slightly less overall volume. It has a "wilder" edge to it and is very cool indeed. I used specially selected 2N5088 transistors of a fairly low gain but still WAY MORE than the Triangle. These, to me sounded better than the other transistors I use in my Muds. They push two silicon clipping stages for that full saturation.
As I've said before, the gain structure is very important to the "harmonics" of this circuit. You can change component values to get different "tones" but the actual gain in any given circuit will bring on the nice harmonics. I personally prefer lower gain in my Muds.
This version has a rounder bottom end and the tone control can take it from a very warm, low end lead machine to a very sixties, almost crackly nasty fuzz, something the other Muds don't really do. This can sound more like the period it was designed than any other BM cone I make.
It is noisier than some others, like the Triangles but nothing that I would consider bad considering the amount of gain in there. Being a higher gain version of an older circuit using mainly green caps (no electros) there will always be a little noise.
This one has NO LED (although future ones might), like the original and is the only Tym Big Mud (so far) that uses different knobs in trying to keep with the original aesthetic a little bit.
I'm not sure how many of these will be made ? If someone decides to trademark the name, and sends me a cease and desist I will stop making them. If I get 15 made this year, they may be an anniversary model, but if I can keep making them, I think I will as this is a pretty cool circuit. Then again, this may be the only five ever made ?
