USA Bearfoot Fuzz Tourbox Sign-Up Thread

[JordanL]

First off thanks to Donner and Doc for the opportunity to try these pedals. I've been fortunate enough to owna few BJFE pedals and this was my first chance to try any of the Bearfoot pedals. I enjoy fuzz pedals, and have accumulated a few nice ones over the years - sunface, fuzz factroy, Bosstone, etc. some that I tried and sold included the Fulltone ultimate octave, and vex octane 3.

My test rig was a Reverend USA spy - strat setup with Lipstick Pickups, into a late 70's Princeton reverb.

all dial settings in o clock notation.

First up is the EGDM. for me the most usful pedal of the bunch, Mostly playing at classic rock jams, and this covered a lot of dirt territiory. I mostly liked the range of drive from 10 to 1, the higher settings were more dirt than I'd use but admittedly a lot of fun. Geat touch response at these settings, lots of ability to contrl the dirt leel with volume tone adjustment and pick attack.

I kept the tone below 12, and liked the voice around 10 - 12 best. I thought this pedal was well voiced, I was playing a bright guitar into a bright amp, with a darker amp I'd want thje extra treble available, I also prefer to tame my treble more than many gutarists.

I'd probably get along well with one of the new low gain egdm versions.

Candy apple fuzz. The most fun pedal of the group for me. lots of great fuzz tones many over the top ( in a good way). Great octave tones, with excellent tracking. I had a lot otf fun with the higher nature settings, but the settings below 12:30 were the ones I thought more useful. Fuzz and tone were around 10-1; genrall as I turned one up I turned the other down.

Pink purple fuzz: I think I would have really liked this pedal into a bigger amp, would have been fun into a marshall. I forund some useful tones in the 11 to 3 range for the fuzz. Tone control was below noon with my setup.

Mystoury(AWF). I started to compare this against my BJFE baby blue OD, and thought it could work as a substitute for that pedal. THE Mystoury was a bit thicker and ruder, but it covered the border between overdrive and fuzz quite well. Like most of the pedals here I enjoyed the tones around noon the most, up to maybe 1. Lots of great saturated tones with moderate compression available, great for blues rock stuff.

[m3talw4rrior]

I picked up the tourbox today at the post office.

[m3talw4rrior]

I shipped the pedals out today, and they are now on their way to Gordon. Thanks to Donner & DocRock for sending the tour box out to all of us this summer.

[DocRock]

Thanks to everybody for their participation thus far!!!

Quick head's up ... page 2 of this thread has the tourbox roster. I have added member Logan to the list. He is now last after Gordon. I'll be PM'ing Gordon with shipping info.

Doc

[Gordon]

TourBox has arrived!! Looking forward to trying these out.

[DocRock]

Excellent, can't wait to see what you think! Thanks again for your participation.

[m3talw4rrior]

I need to preface this tour box review by saying I have not been playing the guitar for a long time, and these pedals were the first fuzz pedals I've ever done anything with. So I'll keep my review brief. My guitar set up is clean as I have single coil pickups on my Fender American Standard strat with a Fender Princeton 112 solid state amp.

Pink Purple Fuzz - The PPF sounded good to me with the nature knob set on the left side of high noon. Past 12 the sound got a little muddy for me no matter where the fuzz was set. Interesting pedal.

Emerald Green Distortion Machine - The EGDM was a little edgier than my Dyna Red Distortion as it didn't sound quite as smooth. It had more aggression than my DRD, but over all it was a clean sounding pedal. I liked it.

I spent a long time with the mystery fuzz (now known as the Arctic White Fuzz) and the Candy Apple Fuzz trying to figure out what I liked about each and how they differed. The mystery AWF was very clean and had a wide range to choose from - from having almost no fuzz to having a lot of fuzz on a very graduating scale. The AWF had a treble almost nasal quality to it, whereas the CAF had a more full sounding fuzz with less of a range. The CAF is either in your face or not at all. It is mostly in your face.

All of the pedals were fun to play. Thanks again for the chance to try them out.

[Gordon]

Pedals on the way to Logan. I will post a review in very short order.

[Gordon]

Hi all, and thanks to Donner and Doc for the opportunity to check out these pedals.

The rig was a maple neck, alder body strat into a BadCat Stella amp. The preamp is basically clean and I pushed the power section into a bit of distortion to really test how the pedals react with the amp after I first tried them all with very clean amp settings to see what the pedals themselves were doing. I wanted to test each pedal for how transparent it is to the guitar tone and how well it clean up when the guitar is turned down or just picked lightly. I generally don't use very high distortion setting.

AWF: This pedal can go from light to very heavy saturation. The full range of F and T are usable. This pedal has the most treble content of the four and as such has a bit more hiss when engaged. Hiss is dependent on the V setting and not the F. I preferred F at noon and below. This pedal is very transparent to the original tone and cleans up very nicely when the guitar is turned down. Then crank the guitar and the gain is right there for you. I liked it very much. You have to watch that you don't over-treble your settings.

CAF: Most intense of the four but still very controllable. F and T very usable all the way up to 3. Above that can get a bit too trebly for me. I preferred lower N settings. Higher then 11 gets very saturated and too full for me. Much like as Fuzz Face that doesn't allow you to lower the bias setting. Still very usable though for the super-fat '60s fuzz sound. Super quite due to noise gate. Turning guitar down or picking lightly it stays distorted all the way down to the point that the NG kicks in and cuts the pedal out of the circuit. Fun to mess with light pick attack and ride the edge of the NG to get some cool sounds.

PPF: This pedal rolls-off high end the most of the four and is another very saturated fuzz. Full range of F is usable. I liked settings from 10 to 3 the best. The N is very fussy on this pedal. I liked from 9 to 11 the best. Above 12 it gets a bit too muted for me and below 9 it gets very fat. I like to turn down the guitar and hear as close to the original tone as possible. With the settings show in the pic below the pedal cleans up very nicely when the guitar is turned down and has a very mild roll-off on the high end. This pedal is not as aggressive on the attack as the AWF. It has a spongier feel which I liked very much. It's also very important to reset the N on this pedal every time that you change your F setting. But, you can always find a good sounding combination.

EGDM: Not the heavy saturation of the others. This pedal truncates the sound the most of the four. ie. knocks off highs and lows to get more of a midrange sound. Although, not too much by any means. More of an overdrive in that regard. Lower D settings fatten up the note much like a Klon, without the unpleasant attack of the Klon. Has the fullest sounding high notes of the four for the amount of gain engaged. It also cleans up very well. Full range of D and T are usable. V is very subtle up to about 3 then it kicks in and gets very fat. I liked V set at about 12 to 1 and then never had to mess with it anymore. This one keeps the pick attack the most natural of the four and has very little “artifact” (ie. extraneous stuff) happening between the notes which I liked very much.

Overall I liked the EGDM and the PPF the most for my tastes. The two pics below show my favorite settings if that's of help to anyone. Overall all four were very fun to mess with and very different from each other.

Best,

Gordon

[DocRock]

Excellent reviews, Gordon! Thanks so much for taking the time.