BJFE / BearFoot fx Guitar Effects Community

Now I am wishing I had run the Mystoury straight into my amp with the pedal's volume maxed out Fuzz around 3 and set the Tone so it works.

I am going to a all afternoon long jam this weekend and I am thinking of skipping the pedal board and just bringing my Bearfoot CAF>PPF>SBEQ. I was going to build a board out of some nice baltic birch to fit 3 or 4 pedals and a Wah, but the week was too busy and now I worry about having a finish dry in time. Which is rather silly as it is well over 100 degrees in my garage with humidity in the single digits! I am noticing the difference between finishing a neck in tru-oil when it is just warm enough versus too damn hot. I am now shooting a very thin nitro on the necks to see how that works out.

One thing I had noticed about the early 50s Fenders I have seen is the reason the finish wore through so fast is they didn't put much on in the first place! The necks I am doing now are done the same way.

ak47 wrote:

thesjkexperience wrote:My favorite stack was Mystoury > BJFE EGDM3k or Model R.

Cool! hmm.. very interesting.. I have been stacking EGDM - MR a lot lately and loving it... Need to watch out for all that gain though So I imagine the mystoury - MR was interesting.. How was the overall result in brightness and how was the R control affected?

From memory the MR is a slightly course sounding distortion and the Mystoury isn't exactly smooth, but more like champagne bubbles/Fuzz. My MR has 1 or 2 different speced components in it due to a Freudian slip by Bjorn. In the back of his mind he knows I can have some trouble with too much top end, so when he built my MR he changed a couple of values that he didn't realize until it was built/finished (but pre-goop). He emailed me to see if I wanted him to fix it to exact spec and I told him to send it as it is because I couldn't turn the R knob past noon on the regular build. It is perfect for me! I imagine Bjorn as a Yoda type character getting in the zone or finding "the force" as he brings these magic boxes to life!

thesjkexperience wrote:From memory the MR is a slightly course sounding distortion and the Mystoury isn't exactly smooth, but more like champagne bubbles/Fuzz. My MR has 1 or 2 different speced components in it due to a Freudian slip by Bjorn. In the back of his mind he knows I can have some trouble with too much top end, so when he built my MR he changed a couple of values that he didn't realize until it was built/finished (but pre-goop). He emailed me to see if I wanted him to fix it to exact spec and I told him to send it as it is because I couldn't turn the R knob past noon on the regular build. It is perfect for me! I imagine Bjorn as a Yoda type character getting in the zone or finding "the force" as he brings these magic boxes to life!

That is too awesome! I have actually been dropping the voltage on my MR for some interesting fuzz tones.. look here for the clips: viewtopic.php?f=4&t=5013

Have a listen as I am interested to hear if my low voltage MR approximates any of the fuzzes you guys have experienced in the tourbox?

ak47 wrote:

thesjkexperience wrote:From memory the MR is a slightly course sounding distortion and the Mystoury isn't exactly smooth, but more like champagne bubbles/Fuzz. My MR has 1 or 2 different speced components in it due to a Freudian slip by Bjorn. In the back of his mind he knows I can have some trouble with too much top end, so when he built my MR he changed a couple of values that he didn't realize until it was built/finished (but pre-goop). He emailed me to see if I wanted him to fix it to exact spec and I told him to send it as it is because I couldn't turn the R knob past noon on the regular build. It is perfect for me! I imagine Bjorn as a Yoda type character getting in the zone or finding "the force" as he brings these magic boxes to life!

That is too awesome! I have actually been dropping the voltage on my MR for some interesting fuzz tones.. look here for the clips: viewtopic.php?f=4&t=5013

Have a listen as I am interested to hear if my low voltage MR approximates any of the fuzzes you guys have experienced in the tourbox?

Our rigs are so different it is hard to tell if it is the HiWatt and 4x12 or the LP with humbuckers that makes your model R sound that way, but it does sound great! My amps are 5, 18 and 30 and I would say the 18 and 30 are quiet for their Wattage, but all the jams I have been going to the last few months people say really nice things as well as many wanting to plug in! I do tend to prefer a fuller sounding dirt pedal since only one of my guitars has a humbucker (Tele neck) and that is not optimized for height. I have to run it a bit low (far from the strings) to keep some balance with the bridge pickup.

The 4 non-fuzz dirt pedals I have are Honey Beeatch and MG which are very low gain and then MR and EGDM which have way more dirt than I need, but both can cover a fuzz if needed. I also have PPF and CAF, both bearfoot, so I do not really need them to be fuzzes.

BTW, at the jam yesterday I just went CAF>MG>Honey Beeatch> amp and people were drooling lol. Except the CAF where someone said that has to be the worst sounding fuzz, but for some reason it sounds so good when you are playing lol. It does a great Neil Young!

Absolutely right... Our rigs are like apples and oranges The thing with recording my Hiwatt is that I can not take it up to happyland volumes without my iphone mic getting all nasty! Still, I am happy how the clips turned out anyway...

I would love to get an 18 watt amp like you have at some point though... My experiences always tell me that 18 is the magic number! As you point out, less is definitely more when teaming amazing dirt boxes and a good amp... I ran a similar setup to you in a jam room full of gear players and my sound was smoking them all! I think I just used my MR and covered a lot of ground from fuzz OD and distortion by using the volume knob and hands.

Out of interest, of everyones experiences with the tourbox fuzzes; what covered the widest range in terms of ripping, zippered, bubbly and spluttery sounds? CAF?

The eagles have landed....thanks Hulakatt. Gave 'em a quick run through to get some first impressions....then A/B'd them against the BJFE versions and got a bit more in depth with them.

Quick first impressions in order of how I tried them prior to A/B'ing:

EGDM: Instantly sounded more modern and less vintage and I noticed how the Voice control taper is in reverse to the original. Also, immediately apparent even with the treble maxed, was that it wasn't as bright as I thought it would be across the entire taper of the Voice control. Sounded like an EGDM though not as bloated and loose as the BJF(mids overall are less focused and also has to do with the way treble merges with the rest of the circuit).

CAF: Monsterous sounding though definitely not as wild and chaotic as the BJFE...I believe "your name" mentioned this and I agree, that with the treble knob, while useful, I found in most settings on the nature knob, and certainly with the fuzz dialed back that I found myself running the treble maxed....out of all of them, I dug this one instantly the most....in fact there are certain things I like about it better than the BJF version, like the faster gate and way more useable tones when dialing back on the guitar volume....I really like this one a lot.

PPF: Again, like the EGDM a bit more modern sounding to my ears and it doesn't have that signature choppy(not gated) treble frequency thing going on, though it's ballsy and rocks with authority....also noticed right away that the nature sweep retains the treble well from noon to fully counter-clockwise, but not clock-wise from noon, so that gradual sweep into darkness going CW on the BJF, happens in like an 1/8 to a 1/4 of a turn on the BF. Overall fuller and meatier than the BJF but less bright as well.

MF: Very cool fuzz...I instantly had a feeling of what I think it sounds like based on the sound and feel, though I will keep that to myself in respect to others in line for the TB. It is well voiced with fuzz at minimum to max....totally has it's own thing going on....nice.

More to follow on the literal A'B impressions with the BJF version(the above again was just solo first impressions), with pix and hopefully some video demos to follow.

ak47 wrote:Out of interest, of everyones experiences with the tourbox fuzzes; what covered the widest range in terms of ripping, zippered, bubbly and spluttery sounds? CAF?

Well, the CAF was the only fuzz that really got into any of those sounds at all out of the Tourbox. The others were all way too smooth and, dare I say it, normal. I must say that out of all of the ripping, zippered, bubbly, spluttery, weird and anarchaic fuzzes I've tried, the CAF was by far the most usable of them.

Hmm... Seems to me that the CAF sounds like it is nasty in the nicest possible way The variety going on here appears to be covering a lot of ground!

The CAF continues to be my personal favorite. I don't say too much, as I want to give everyone a fair chance to check everything out for themselves. But, oh my, do I love it.

The BJFe CAF covers a pretty wide range of fuzztones and over the years there have been many requests to pull it in a number of directions - smoother and singier and more cohesive ---- and the other way too, right thru the 'gates' of velcro and packing tape ..... This version makes best use of the singing side of the germ trannies and does some great soloing Steely Dan stuff ~ a really good companion to the Pink Purple ....... there will be another version that goes in the other direction with enough velcro to stick an over caffienated monkey to a banana cream pie ...