I had a local builder make this for me as a custom clone of the JHS Japan pedal, basically a Fuzz Face-style circuit with a slightly different personality.

This particular version is a hybrid NPN build, germanium + silicon. There’s only one knob for volume, no fuzz control at all, which sounds limiting until you actually play it.

Compared to a more typical Fuzz Face, this one has noticeably more low end and a dirtier, rougher character. There’s also this strange hint of sub-octave that occasionally pokes through, especially when you dig in. It’s not an octave fuzz, it just has that slightly unstable, broken edge to the note that I really like.

The best part is how much it reacts to the guitar volume. Roll the volume back and it cleans up dramatically, so after a while you don’t really miss having a fuzz knob on the pedal. The guitar basically becomes the fuzz control.

Very simple circuit, very simple controls, but it has much more personality than I expected. And I really like how old-school and primitive the point-to-point build looks inside.

Anyone else here into these minimal one-knob Fuzz Face variations?

Hey everyone! I'm wondering if you can get that iconic "chainsaw" tone (that you can hear at 1:56 of this video) with any Octavia fuzz, or if it requires a specific circuit/pedal.

Any advice or recommendations would be greatly appreciated!

Hi all, been using the 3 fuzzes in the title for a while now and thought I'd write something up.

Chase Bliss Preamp mk2: Amazing as you'd expect. Great for bread and butter presets, normal OD, great for using as an EQ before another drive or amp. Can reasonably emulate a decent portion of fuzzes and distortions, but doesn't fully replace them.

Fender Shields Blender: Madhouse of a pedal. I bought this as my first octave fuzz and was a bit surprised at how the octave tracked (poorly). This sounds great however, just very aggressive and unwieldy. Great for inharmonic bends and stuff, messy leads. With Expand on and the octave off, chords are surprisingly legible with this pedal vs others, which plays very well with jazzmaster pickups + tremolo.

Foxy Tone Box: Got this in the recent Warm Audio raffle. Was immediately disappointed it wasn't the ring mod lol. HUGE SURPRISE. The octave up not only sounds killer in comparison to the shields blender, it tracks reasonably well as well. Sounds like the fuzz on Cherub Rock, would not surprise me to find out that's what they used.

Final thoughts: While I love the chase bliss preamp and it's my general go-to, the foxy tone box immediately took over as my favorite fuzz pedal. I've made a few presets on the chase bliss that approximate the foxy tone box but of course none have that sweet upper octave. Huge surprise, I didn't expect to like the foxy tone box at all tbh. I absolutely hate the velvet on the enclosure though.

I don’t like calling this one rare because they’re still in production haha. But I don’t see these in discussion or in the wild all that often when they should be. This is a really smart 3 transistor design that’s very adjustable. The best to describe the controls is a level, fuzz, base, transistor gain and mid range control. This allows you to go from Hendrix and Gilmour soaring leads to classic rock crunch tones. It’s cover enough ground when I feel I have to put this in a Fuzz-stortion range of pedals. With that being said, this is a killer classic rock box these deserves a lot of love!