Useless fact : Fuzz was the first transistor floor pedal fx for guitar. There were guitar fx prior, but all were vacuum tube based and not exactly pedal board friendly...

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The tube driven effects pedal was soon almost entirely replaced when the engineering marvel called the Transistor was created. This occurred in 1962 when the first full production transistorised pedal called the ‘Maestro Fuzz Tone‘. Despite being invented in 1962, it was made famous three years later when the Rolling Stones produced their smash hit ‘(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction‘.

Joss @ JHS Pedals covers the origin of fuzz - it more a run through his fuzz pedal collection, tbh.

He also did a Big Muff Shoot out - which was great. I'm definitely a Green Russian fan.

The Big Muff Pi one was my first fuzz experience and I hated it. Much later I tried a Boss Hyper Fuzz and that was similarly sucky (to me). Also had a run with octave fuzz, which I'm also not a fan of. After that, I thought fuzz sucked- until a couple years ago I got to mess on a original Russian Green Muff. Wow. Since then I've been messing around with the 'fuzz face' model on my multifx - it's also the most gainy of the 4 drive options I got on the sucky zoom b2 of mine (hey. it's a bass unit).

On a single coil guitar, fuzz makes a lot more sense to me - back in the day I was humbuckers only. But These days I'm leaning the opposite - so I'm kinda understanding the about turn on fuzz (I had a similar thing w/wah back when I got my strat).

I'm figuring it it slowly - but placement in your fx chain is apparently important. It seems you want it before any buffered pedal(s). Since mine's multi-fx based - no issues there (yet...foreshadowing).

It's a mids rich fx so tweaking the low & high mids totally change things - I'd say to get the most out of the typical fuzz, you want a EQ somewhere in your rig. The zoom has a 6 band one, and it makes all the difference. Cut mids for a darker, more 90's scooped metal tone or boost for a TS9-y in yer face rawk vibe.

And, lastly experiment with your guitar volume backed off - here's a demo

Got any tips/idea's/comments or furry pedals to gift me?