What if in an alternate universe the Fuzz Face™ and a Green Russian Big Muff™ had a baby?
That’s the premise and the proposed experiment.This experiment is both very recent and a long time in the making.Those lucky few who have gotten a Summer Cyan know that I have been toying with “altered Fuzz Face™” concepts for a while now.But it took a Secret Santa custom build I did for a talented colleague Heritage Effects this Christmas to really galvanize the idea.
Sometimes simpler is better, in this case I had the thought what if I simply took FF-ish transistors, and transistors from my favorite BMP variant, and smushed them together? So I put BC108C’s in Q1 and Q2 - that’s the FF’s voice, and KT3102’s in Q3 through Q5 - that’s the GRBM’s voice. Some intense tweaking later, and the Starbird started to sing. Now that said, the Starbird doesn’t sound like either the FF or the GRBMP, it sounds like The Starbird, but there are hints of both its parents.There is a wide-range of volume knob cleanup that you just cannot get with a BMP, and there is “stickiness” to the fuzz that you can’t get with a FF.There are also surprises, like singing, articulate, Gilmour-esque lead tones that virtually play themselves.
To match the sound it was an obvious choice to go with a mil-surp theme:Olive drab, black, and polished brass.In that same vein Dawn whipped-up some brass can 80n’s that look as cool as they sound.The Texture toggle selects the following diode configuration:
1.Brass Can 80n - strong attack, high headroom, additional harmonics
2.Blower (diode lift) - pure transistor, loud and fat
3.1N4148 Silicon pair - a little trashy, but in a really good way, mutes the attack just a tad
There are a ton of tones in The Starbird, and enough output to use as a low-gain boost. The overall gain is lower than any other Spiral fuzz, that's what earns it the Fuzzstortion label. It is tuned to my usual PAF/Vox preferences but I've been testing it with many different setups and it sounds different and great with all. One fave in particular is with P90's, oh mercy! The additional low-cut Focus toggle is excellent for either lead tones that you want to cut through, or running into an already hot amp channel to avoid excess bass build-up. Also since the Focus Toggle is pre-clipping, it changes the character of the fuzz, tightens it, Focuses it!
Solo Gain Maxed, Bias Maxed, Detail at 1:00, Output 1:00, Focus Toggle down, Texture Toggle 80n, neck pickup
Clean Intro Harmonics same as Tight Rhythm, but with the guitar volume turned down halfway
Dirty Bass track is Gain at 1:00, Detail at 11:00, Output at noon Focus Toggle in the middle, Texture Up.
Pickup Notes: For single-coils the Detail lives more in the 9:00-10:00 range, and the Gain and Bias are set higher. With stock MiM Strat pickups I'll run the Starbird's Gain almost at max, just slightly backed-off, and the Bias at 2:00. The cleans that can be achieved by backing off the guitar volume on a Strat are a thing of beauty.
The Starbird Fuzzstortion is the newest addition to the Spiral Electric FX line of hand built pedals. Although I am building as fast as I can, this initial release will be 30 pedals numbered SB 001-030. Available Saturday, January 31st at 10am MT.
