Quote from: sfrErik, I just went to yr site, I'm in love with the crucible fuzz, (especially the humbucker bridge setting) - that perfect over the top crazy intense fuzz w/o being "metal" like so many high-gain fuzzes seem to be lately.  I wish my Crest FF sounded half as good as this.  You'll most likely be seeing some $ coming yr way if my tax return ever shows up.  Tell me, are those clips recorded right into the box w/o an amp at all, as they appear from the description and photo?  

Is the Fresh Air a clean boost sort of thing?  [Or is like my FF, which constantly picks up the NPR program of the same name when the fuzz and volume knobs are all the way up (gotta do something about that someday)]

(I'm starting a new thread for this because I didn't want to take up space in the one on pretty enclosures. I finally recorded and got clips of the Crucible Fuzz up on my website earlier this week, but I felt funny about posting advertising on this forum. Anyway.)

Thanks so much for the good words. It really makes me happy when someone else (especially on this forum) likes it as much as I do. Funny, my decision to start marketing the Crucible Fuzz was inspired by the fact that Dave Fox seems to only make a BC109-based fuzz foot (or whatever he calls it) about every 6 months or so, and otherwise only sells the circuit as part of the Captain Coconut. So if you like it better than a Crest FF, picture me dancing like Snoopy with his supper dish. :-)

The clips were recorded by going into the Crucible Fuzz, then into a Fender Pro Reverb, mic'd up with a single ribbon mic. The idea, as I told Myles, was to represent how the box actually sounds rather than to "get a good guitar sound." As I found out by attempting it in my home studio, there's a world of difference between getting a good guitar sound and accurately representing what a device does to a guitar pickup's signal.

Here at home, I can get a good guitar sound. This usually means throwing some chorus on it, EQ'ing the heck out of it, audio enhancement, plenty of reverb, whatever. Also putting it in a mix with other instruments. My best mic is a Beyer M69, and with enough processing, it's fine for the purpose.

If I did all that, just using the Crucible Fuzz as one element, I would feel dishonest. So I traded Myles Boisen (who's up for a Grammy this year-go Myles!) some crazy mod work on his crappy-sounding Dunlop Jimi Hendrix Fuzz for some studio time at his Guerilla Studios. Myles writes reviews of expensive mics for Electronic Musician, among other things, so I figured he might have something nice and accurate in the cabinet. I was right.

He sent it directly from the mic to a fancy A/D converter to 2-track DAT. It's as honest as I could make it and I think it sounds great.

LOL about the NPR/FF reference! Yeah, the Fresh Air Linear Boost is a clean boost. It's my take on an Orman MOSFET. Myles is gigging and recording with his already, and bought one as a gift for his bass player.

He told me that at the next rehearsal after I gave him the FALB to try out, he plugged his bass player (standup) into it and the rest of the band wanted to know why he sounded so much better all of a sudden (Snoopy dance again).

The moments of joy I get when I hear stuff like this are really wonderful.

I can't thank Aron and Jack and everyone else enough for this forum and their contributions.

Are you using BC109s?  That's what's in my Crest, and it just isn't doing it for me - I wonder if it's my pickups - farts out when I feed it with humbuckers - wonderous singy bluesy tone w/ single coils.  Neck position it sings so beautifully, in this odd sort of way, doesn't even sound like a guitar at all.  

What sort of guitar was the humbucker one?  I love my korina SG, and have been looking for a fuzz like that, that would work with it.  So sorry to go on and on, but glad you liked the praise.   When my $ situation gets worked out, you should be getting an email.

Yes, I'm using BC109's. The ones I use have at least 4X the gain recommended for FF's, though, which is why I don't make a big deal out of the FF heritage.

The Crucible Fuzz is to a vintage FF as a Mesa/Boogie Mark III is to a Fender Bassman.

One of the things that sets my pedal apart from the sea of FF variants out there is that I am not trying to make it sound like "Jimi on BoG" or whatever. What I'm going for with these things is a new (if perhaps retro in some way) tone.

It has the purity and simplicity of design of the hallowed FF, but it goes further.

I actually tried putting all the same components in Myles' Jimi Hendrix Fuzz that I put in the Crucible Fuzz (the PCB's are close enough), but I had a hell of a time getting rid of the parasitic oscillation, and even after that, he liked the actual Crucible enough to buy one in addition to the JHF.

Now I've been given the JHF to twist into the demented noise box of my choice. I will be performing unsavory experiments on it.

Anyway, my board layout lets me leave in all the gain that the BC109's can churn out without having to siphon anything off with little capacitors or any of that.