Sunday, October 11, 2020

THE END: Dual fuzz dream eater

 So, I've been diving deep into the V1 Fuzz War again and again, and have another variant on the horizon.  Last year's Dark Sun was more of a re-imagining with a harsher edge, but I was still looking to capture the thick fuzziness of the V1 Fuzz War and something close to the Silver Armageddon.

Well after a couple months of testing, tweaking, and re-testing. I have (re-re-re-)designed a functioning silver Armageddon. This was largely based on the gut shots from a known source and the values from tracing my personal V1 Fuzz War.

As an overview,

 The End is a dual fuzz which allows you to select different filters via footswitch.  In addition, there are two toggle switches, 1 to allow more or less low frequencies to enter at 2 points in the circuit, and one to switch between the original silver Armageddon, and a personal variant for the fuzz/filters.

I made some small tweaks to the design to optimize performance, but this pedal "The End" is supposed to be as faithful of a recreation of the silver Armageddon as possible. In the next series of posts I'll post more details about 'The End'.

In this post I'll talk about options for the notch filter also referred to as "Filter 1":

Here is what the silver Armageddon's notch filter looks like. It provides a very deep cut that can be shifted up and down the frequency range so that you can cut out lows, mids, or highs. The notch ranges from approximately 100Hz up to 1.1kHz with an approximate 50db cut.

This may be too extreme for some guitar players when cutting the lower frequencies, but then again if you are interested in the V1 Fuzz War, you probably aren't interested in a typical friendly sounding fuzz. This thing can get harsh...Think MEDICINE harsh!!! Nevertheless, I wanted to add versatility to the fuzz and I've incorporated an option to change the depth and sweep for the filter to something a little more open sounding while still blown out and amazing.
As you can see, the notch is attenuated (-35db), which results in a louder sound throughout the frequency range from 150Hz through 1.2kHz.


On the other side (Filter 2), we have a tilt filter which functions like a BMP tone stack but the notch is shifted much lower than your typical BMP. This tilt filter is centered around 600Hz, a more useable range that shouldn't be as competitive in the mix.
This fuzz output from Filter 2 is hard clipped to give it an aggressive sound, but once again with the "add options mindset", I've added the option to lift those diodes, which adds a volume boost and a blown out sound to compliment the Filter 1 notch adjustment.


So in summary, the "Clip" switch on THE END will allow you to switch between the original silver Armageddon sound, and a more blown out variation that I've added.


More details to come soon...