Gilmour Fuzziness...

[stevie_bees]

What are you guys using to get those lovely singing Gilmour lead tones?? I like the sound of the Skreddy P19, but at $195 + shipping it's a little too expensive for me. I do have a Big Muff Tone Wicker currently on my board, and I have thought about an EQ to push the mids more, but I like the other things that the Muff does so I'd rather have another fuzz (plus you can never have too many, right? )!

Another that's caught my eye (ear) is the Mojo Hand Colossus, although I'd have to get a little lucky in the 2nd hand market again...Am I just better building a clone and tweaking to taste??

What are the best options out there??

 

[Empty Pockets]

Re: Gilmour Fuzziness...

if what you want can be described as "big muff + more mids" I'd say look at the Swollen Pickle... that's essentially what it aims to do.

i have several friends who used Muffs for years and retired the big gray box for the slightly-less-big green one just because you can dial in something a little meaner that stands on its own better with the Pickle than you can with the Muff.

Personally I've grown to love that scooped-mids thick-bass tone from a normal Muff with the tone at 12-1 o'clock... if I want more mids I either hit the strings harder or use some kind of OD in front of it.

 

[Agileguy_101]

Re: Gilmour Fuzziness...



While it costs $15 more than the Skreddy, it's worth EVERY FREAKING PENNY. I use it every song as my primary source of distortion and it's just fabulous. The mids knob gets stock tones around 8-9 o clock, and everything beyond that is wonderful. Also, John has tuned the circuit slightly to be much more useable than a vintage muff - on an old style one, you had to leave the tone between 11 and 1, otherwise it would just sound pretty bad. John's Tri/Ram sounds incredible throughout the whole range on each knob. I can't recommend them highly enough, and they should be easy enough to find used over on TGP.

 

[Kam]

Gilmour Fuzziness...

If I remember correctly, there was a local guy selling a Mojo Hand Colossus for around £60. If you're interested, I'll have a sniff around for you, see if it's still around.

 

[les_paul]

Re: Gilmour Fuzziness...

I've had tremendous luck running an OD after a fuzz face style pedal (Keeley Fuzz Head in my case). I use a BBE Green Screamer and it adds a good deal of warmth. It doesn't work too well with the Muff style fuzzes, though.

 

[uOpt]

Re: Gilmour Fuzziness...

Big muff on the neck single coil.

 

[James Rock]

Re: Gilmour Fuzziness...

Seeming you have a Big Muff style pedal maybe try a fuzz face style and an overdrive pedal depends if you want wall style tones or DSOTM. The skreddy stuff is meant to be great gilmour tones.

 

[hermetico]

Re: Gilmour Fuzziness...

I think Gilmour is using two "massive destruction weapons", depending on the song.
One is the Big Muff and, the other is the Butler Tube Drive.
For a clear sounding Big Muff (among other flavors), look at the Wampler Leviathan.

 

[AudioWonderland]

Re: Gilmour Fuzziness...

BYOC Large Beaver. Can be buillt to triangle or Rams head era specs. It has EQ options for original eq, a mid boosted eq and 2 other that I can't recall. Its the perfect choice for Gilmour fuzz tones. Some assembly required

 

[stevie_bees]

Re: Gilmour Fuzziness...

I quite like the idea of the BYOC. It would be a good fun project as well as getting me another fuzzy option...

 

[stevie_bees]

Re: Gilmour Fuzziness...

Maybe I should just stick with the Tone Wicker Muff and just get something to drive the Muff?

 

[Funkfingers]

Re: Gilmour Fuzziness...

Don't forget the Alembic B-1 pre-amp.

 

[J.C.R.W]

Re: Gilmour Fuzziness...

My favorite Gilmour tone is from Live at Pompeii, and he uses a very basic setup for pedals. I can get close to this type sound with an Analogman Sunface BC-108 silicon fuzz mixed with a little delay. If you're able to crank the volume it sounds glorious!

 

[Van Noord]

Re: Gilmour Fuzziness...

A big key to that tone is starving the voltage. Makes a HUGE difference in tone.

 

[the guy who invented fire]

Re: Gilmour Fuzziness...

Stevie!

What did you ever decide?

 

[stevie_bees]

Re: Gilmour Fuzziness...

Hey Christian! At the moment I'm going to tweak with the Big Muff Tone Wicker, the Doubleback Compressor and the clean/boost side of my Blackstar HT Dual to see how close I can get/be happy with for now.

I'd like to get in to building/tweaking pedals and amps as I have plenty of electronic skills from my day job, and I'm going to combine that with this search and build myself a Muff clone...tweaked to taste!

I'd still like to play with more fuzziness as I'm becoming more addicted to a sound that I never got before...

 

[the guy who invented fire]

Re: Gilmour Fuzziness...

A Muff and a Comp will for sure get you into some Gilmour tones so no worries there!

To start with keep the sustain (or gain or fuzz) knob a little over half...too much is too fuzzy but too low robs you of sustain.

Keep the tone sort of low to (under half maybe) to smooth things out and give you more of a singing quality and less of a hair dryer like sound...

Don't be afraid to use a low gain OD with the Muff as well...not really for more gain but for a colour option and with adding the compressor maybe even lower the muff's sustain control even more.

Good luck brother!

 

[stevie_bees]

Re: Gilmour Fuzziness...

I'd be interested on your thoughts of the 'clone' fuzz market Christian. There does seem to be some great pedals out there that 'fix' the problems of the original Muffs and Fuzzfaces. Is it a question of problems that needed fixing, or that there are so many options out there that people don't work as hard to make the kit they have work for them? I see a lot of homebuilt pedals out there at the moment labelled 'boutique', but essentially are just copying somebody else's fuzz mods.

Is there anything out there in 'clone' land that really catches your eye/ear?

 

[the guy who invented fire]

Re: Gilmour Fuzziness...

Well, there can be problems or issues with lots of things and it's player/rig dependent...something that is an "issue" for you an your rig might not be an issue at all for me and my rig so a lot of times when a builder "fixes' something it's because he has a problem with a piece of gear in his rig.

In addition to that it has been my experience that when tweaking things in effects (or guitars and amps to be honest) you have to be very careful because you can often loose something that shouldn't be lost.

A lot of this old gear has warts, issues and parts of the whole package that buy us as players and sometimes they can be corrected, fixed or in some way made better but then you've lost something important...remember, changing things no matter how small will have an impact on the overall results in some way.

There are lots of good clones out there!

Keep this in mind...a good late 60's Si Fuzz Face is over a grand now, mid 60's Ge Fuzz Face almost 2 grand, some old Tone Benders are breaking 2 grand, original Rangemasters are bringing 3-4 thousand, a good Clyde Mc Coy wah is over a thousand dollars now...even funky MIJ pedals form the 70's are bringing $400, $600 even more so clones can be a GREAT way out for many players today!

In the fuzz world AnalogMan does great Fuzz Faces with his Sunface, the newest Dunlop Fuzz Faces are tops, Hartman makes a good Fuzz Face, BMF effects does a great Fuzz Face as well as Tone Bender and a killer Big Muff plus a new wah that's about to come out, Kevin Wilson makes some good wah pedals as well as a few other things...the list can go on and on and on and there are dozens of other big and smaller builders I didn't mention because we'd be here all day!

It's really simple...do as much research online as you can with reviews and sound clips and if you like what you hear take a chance...if you like when you get it home then enjoy it!