Re: New Product: Seymour Duncan Tweak Fuzz Pedal
So… you figured out our new pedal. Sorry for the lame front page clues, Scott and everybody else. Artie, you were soooooooooooooo close!
Anyway, we’re very, very excited about the SFX-02 Tweak Fuzz.
Around a year ago, I assembled a focus group with some of the top minds in the pedal community. They included session and performing artists, LA’s top gear rental-guy, retailers, one of the foremost authorities on stomp boxes and a guitar magazine editor and Seymour Duncan’s R&D team, of which I’m a member. The thing we kept hearing is that, more and more often, record producers are asking session players to track with fuzz tones. And the top session players are looking for the right fuzz flavor.
Cut to me talking to Blues and him telling me about the Afro Fuzz which his father designed. If you know about Blues, then you know that he was using amps designed and built by his father for many years. But the amps were expensive and heavy to haul, and after awhile, Blues shifted his live and session work to using smaller amps with a couple of very versatile pedals that enabled him to get virtually any tone he was after.
One of those pedals was the Afro Fuzz. We tried one out and immediately dug it.
Two years ago, Blues did some recording with a major, multi-platinum artist. Her producer is known as one of the biggest guitar tone snobs in LA. Blues used the Afro Fuzz all over her album. The producer was floored by the Afro Fuzz and he bought one from Alex. Then the producer started turning other session players on to it. One thing leads to another and now the small cadre of top players for sessions and scoring are using it for live work and tracking.
About the pedal. It’s basic tone is similar to a Fuzz Face, but it’s not screechy at all. The Tweak control make this a very versatile fuzz pedal - the kind of pedal you bring with you on a session when you have to come up with a lot of usable tones.
The Tweak Fuzz is almost identical to the Afro Fuzz - but in a different box and with a name that’s not going to cause people to write us complaint letters. However, we opted not to use germaniums for several reasons: they’re hard to source, they’re expensive, they shut down when they get hot and, most importantly, we figured out a way to make silicons sound so, so, so close to the germaniums that, in a blind sound test, Blues and I were both fooled into thinking that the Tweak Fuzz was the Afro Fuzz.
Last week we shot some video at Blue’s home-studio of him using the pedal. If you have any doubts about what this thing can do, I believe they’ll be put to rest when you see the video. The video should be up on the site in a couple of weeks.
OK… you have no idea how tired I am at the moment. NAMM was great. And it was great to see a few of you there: Scott_F, Gomano, B2D, etc. But what was really great was to hear all the buzz from artists, dealers and the press on this hot new pedal.