Jaques Fuse Blower II

[Rodgre]

Has anyone played with this pedal? I've fallen in love with the thing again recently. Great studio pedal.

What I love about it is that is has some of the tonalities of a superfuzz, but stays clear and let's chords ring through while still sounding "heavily fuzzed."

So I will say now that i'm not asking for a schematic for it, as it's a pedal totally worth buying .

I'm just curious as to what makes a design like this so different and special beyond what the simply DIYer can do.

What I mean is that I've been DIYing for almost 20 years and I'm not sure if I've ever built a distortion pedal that was so much "better" than anything else on the market, like the Fuse Blower II is to me. That pedal does something that I wish other pedals did, and I wonder what goes into that design process.

I've built tweaked out Tube Screamers. I've built all sorts of fuzzes, mostly clones. They can sound good, even great, but never to the point of "this is such an improvement on what is available out there."

So my question is two-fold. How does anyone else feel about the Fuse Blower? At the same time, have any of you built/designed something that once you were done with it, you were so happy with it that you felt you finally got "your sound"?

Roger

[Mike Nichting]

Well, I can answer the first part, I dig the Fuse Blower too~!!
very cool pedal. I liked it better than my TS9. I modded my TS9 and it sounds awesome but not like the Fuse Blower.

Worth every penney in my book~!!

Mike

[gez]

have any of you built/designed something that once you were done with it, you were so happy with it that you felt you finally got "your sound"?

I have very discerning ears so I rarely build most of what I design - I'm a perpetual tinkerer.  Occasionally I come up with something I like and sometimes I nail things.  

As far as sounding 'better' than anything commercial manufacturers churn out, a lot of their stuff isn't to my satisfaction either - there's always something I don't like about it, or something extra I wished it could do.

I went through a phase of designing one CMOS overdrive after another, but the last one 'nailed it' so I suppose, for me, it IS better than anything out there - I no longer use my Tube Screamer (even thinking of selling it!) so I must like it!  As with anything though, we always learn new tricks, and the last time I looked at the schematic I couldn't help thinking there were better ways of doing some things...perpetual tinkerer alright!