Black Math - Mask Audio Electronics
Velcro Fuzz Shootout
Mar 03 2021Sorry, your browser sucks ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
If there is a specific tone that I crave for my personal setup, it’s velcro fuzz.
What is velcro fuzz? It’s hard to describe and one of those things where you know it when you see it. You could throw adjectives at it like gated, spitty and splattery, but still somewhat controlled.
It's great for live situations. It cuts through a mix pretty well. There is a feeling of your amp going bad in a good way. Due to the gated circuit, noise is pretty low when you don’t play anything. Fantastic for rhythm parts.
So how did the pedals perform?
JHS Mini Foot Fuzz V2
On full blast, this thing sounds like it’s whipping your ears. There is a hint of an octave up effect. "Splattery" definitely fits the bill here.
On the "tamed" setting, the Mini Foot actually sounded very tamed. I believe this would sound best with a low to medium gain drive before it.
There are no EQ controls on the Mini Foot. You have one sound to work with. And I think that’s beautiful.
Smallsound/Bigsound Mini
Wait what? Isn’t this an overdrive? Well, yeah but turn the gain up and the bias down a bit and welcome to fuzzland.
This sounded the most "dry" of all of the contenders. Listen to the silence in between notes during the staccato part of the loop.
The Mini shines again with its versatility. I prefer this on the tamed setting.
Animalizzer from T.X Pedals
When I first got the Animalizzer, I didn’t even know it has this sound. And I think it‘s now my favorite sound of this pedal.
The key elements to achieving this sound is to select open for both clipping stages, turning fuzz and pre-gain past 70% and diming the depth knob.
To me, this had the best allround sound. It sounded fat, yet distinct with a nice natural fuzz sound. There’s also a lot of control with the 3-band EQ to adjust the tone to taste.
At full blast it was a bit noisier than the other two. If there was an actual bias knob here, I bet this could be remedied and would make it sound even more velcroy.
Vaderin HP-X
When I first received the HP-X, I didn't know much about harmonic percolators. But immediately after taking it for spin, I knew I had to add it to this list.
With the different diode clipping options, it does that spitty/gated/velcro fuzz sound well.
MAE Black Math
The Black Math from MAE has a super tasty and chewy velcro sound when the boost is turned up.
It's really easy to fine-tune this sound. The tone, gain and boost knobs give you just enough control to dial it up to taste while keeping it simple.
Signal Chain
- Epiphone SG Special (P90, bridge pickup)
- Animalizzer / JHS Mini Foot Fuzz / SM/BS Mini
- Catalinbread Topanga, set very subtle
- Strymon Iridium (Chime)
- Focusrite Scarlett 2i2
- Garageband
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Related Demos
HP-X - Vaderin Pedals
Animalizzer - T.X Pedals
Mini Foot Fuzz V2 - JHS Pedals
Mini - Smallsound / Bigsound