Braunzo
04-03-2011, 09:55 AM
Alright, I had been anxiously waiting this pedal for a couple of weeks now. I've always loved the idea of fuzz as it's very unique and pretty easy to find multiple sounds while just using your guitars controls. Sadly, I've never found one that I 100% bonded with. That being said, I hopped on Analogman's site and started looking at Sun Faces. But I remember trying to use my Fuzz Face for things and it just didn't cut it. Then I hopped on the Astrotone's page and read about how Analog Mike actually wanted this to work on old Fender amps. That was enough for me to bite the bait.
Fast forward two weeks and I receive it in the mail Friday. I plug it and my Tele into a Princeton Reverb at the store. Holy crap, it was bright. Which is fine in a lot of cases with fuzzes, but this was just bad... Then I remembered how bright my DRRI was when I first got it, so I just attributed it to the speaker not being broken in yet. Then I went to the Peavey Valve King (GREAT pedal platform, btw) and then it all made sense. From the first few chords the description that came to mind was that it sounded like a Marshall getting read to explode. Whipped out some Zeppelin riffs and whatnot and while it doesn't even come close to nailing the tone in those songs, it does make them sound really friggin' cool! It did however nail Stranglehold... While I'm not a Nuge fan, what a cool riff and tone.
Fast forward to the next time after I sat down with my rig and kind of tweaked it. It's show time. Playing a bit of a joke benefit, so I can really tweak this pedal. I was running my Road Worn Tele and my 68 Bandmaster through a Marshall 4x10 cabinet. Tasty little rig if I do say so myself. First few songs in, holy crap... This thing was awesome. It made those boring pop-punk tunes actually sound cool (All The Small Things) and then I just had to open my volume knob on my guitar all the way and it handled the really grungy Nirvana stuff (Breed). It's definitely not a huge over the top fuzz by any means, but the Astrotone I've noticed is about what I expect out of a fuzz. It's stupidly reactive to your tone/volume controls on the guitar. I love that the most about the pedal. One thing I will say was there was no proper soundcheck so I was a lot louder than I normally have it. I did like the tone a bit better when I wasn't cranking the tubes as hard. But it still sounded excellent. I never turned the pedal off all night. All the clean passages were courtesy of my volume knob. And I actually liked my clean tone BETTER just rolling down the Astrotone. I did have to be very cautious with my tone knobs, though. Rolling off the tone a little bit on the tele really added a lot of body to the sound.
After I was done playing the tele, we went to our half step songs where I use a Gibson SG. First song we do is Bulls on Parade... Rolling down that volume knob just a little bit had that super dynamic, clear, pushy drive that I expect out of ANY pedal. This thing BRINGS IT. It really shined with the SG. We closed out the night with Zero by Smashing Pumpkins and I just cranked the volume all the way up for that one. I think Corgan would have been happy with a fuzz he could have used live back in the day rather than substituting his Big Muffs with the Marshall Preamp. I used to use a Musket for that sound that almost nailed the tone on the album (to an non-overdubbed extent, of course), but I had a problem with it cutting. This thing just makes it cut and still has that fuzzy, harmonically rich sound.
Overall, this pedal is probably the best money I've spent on a fuzz. It works great if you like using the controls on your guitar. It's a very unique sound that I still say sounds like a Marshall that's getting ready to explode. This thing CUTS. It made a lot more sense using this pedal in a band setting. If you're not normally a fuzz person or never found a fuzz you bonded with, you need to check this one out. It's unique. It's not nearly as compressed as other fuzzes, but still has all the harmonic matter that makes a fuzz great. Will I say I've bonded with the pedal 100%? I still say it's too soon to give an honest answer on that. But I want to say 'YES!' really bad...
Fast forward two weeks and I receive it in the mail Friday. I plug it and my Tele into a Princeton Reverb at the store. Holy crap, it was bright. Which is fine in a lot of cases with fuzzes, but this was just bad... Then I remembered how bright my DRRI was when I first got it, so I just attributed it to the speaker not being broken in yet. Then I went to the Peavey Valve King (GREAT pedal platform, btw) and then it all made sense. From the first few chords the description that came to mind was that it sounded like a Marshall getting read to explode. Whipped out some Zeppelin riffs and whatnot and while it doesn't even come close to nailing the tone in those songs, it does make them sound really friggin' cool! It did however nail Stranglehold... While I'm not a Nuge fan, what a cool riff and tone.
Fast forward to the next time after I sat down with my rig and kind of tweaked it. It's show time. Playing a bit of a joke benefit, so I can really tweak this pedal. I was running my Road Worn Tele and my 68 Bandmaster through a Marshall 4x10 cabinet. Tasty little rig if I do say so myself. First few songs in, holy crap... This thing was awesome. It made those boring pop-punk tunes actually sound cool (All The Small Things) and then I just had to open my volume knob on my guitar all the way and it handled the really grungy Nirvana stuff (Breed). It's definitely not a huge over the top fuzz by any means, but the Astrotone I've noticed is about what I expect out of a fuzz. It's stupidly reactive to your tone/volume controls on the guitar. I love that the most about the pedal. One thing I will say was there was no proper soundcheck so I was a lot louder than I normally have it. I did like the tone a bit better when I wasn't cranking the tubes as hard. But it still sounded excellent. I never turned the pedal off all night. All the clean passages were courtesy of my volume knob. And I actually liked my clean tone BETTER just rolling down the Astrotone. I did have to be very cautious with my tone knobs, though. Rolling off the tone a little bit on the tele really added a lot of body to the sound.
After I was done playing the tele, we went to our half step songs where I use a Gibson SG. First song we do is Bulls on Parade... Rolling down that volume knob just a little bit had that super dynamic, clear, pushy drive that I expect out of ANY pedal. This thing BRINGS IT. It really shined with the SG. We closed out the night with Zero by Smashing Pumpkins and I just cranked the volume all the way up for that one. I think Corgan would have been happy with a fuzz he could have used live back in the day rather than substituting his Big Muffs with the Marshall Preamp. I used to use a Musket for that sound that almost nailed the tone on the album (to an non-overdubbed extent, of course), but I had a problem with it cutting. This thing just makes it cut and still has that fuzzy, harmonically rich sound.
Overall, this pedal is probably the best money I've spent on a fuzz. It works great if you like using the controls on your guitar. It's a very unique sound that I still say sounds like a Marshall that's getting ready to explode. This thing CUTS. It made a lot more sense using this pedal in a band setting. If you're not normally a fuzz person or never found a fuzz you bonded with, you need to check this one out. It's unique. It's not nearly as compressed as other fuzzes, but still has all the harmonic matter that makes a fuzz great. Will I say I've bonded with the pedal 100%? I still say it's too soon to give an honest answer on that. But I want to say 'YES!' really bad...