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Flattley releases an upgraded 1960s-style silicon fuzz with a buffer and extended tonal options
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8M0rSUOsZ78&t=7s
1. The pedal’s aesthetics place it firmly in the company’s more ornate Platinum range, with Día de Muertos sugar skull-inspired metal-flake
livery and a high-gloss finish over multiple layers of paint and lacquer.
2. The Grunt knob varies the input signal frequency response before it is distorted by the fuzz section. Essentially, you can EQ the signal going into the fuzz – turn it up for a fatter sound.
3. The halo light ring surrounding the footswitch diffuses the light when playing live, avoiding the off-putting brightness you may get from standard LEDs.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=heSQGg0_qqc&t=80s
The last Flattley pedal we looked at was The Ace tone booster in issue 495 but now the company has returned with a closely related release. The brand says this new version of its DG Fuzz is effectively a double pedal: a 60s-style fuzz that now incorporates a simplified version of The Ace and a typical period tone stack in one four-knob enclosure.
The pedal has its roots in the Fuzz Face circuit of the late 1960s. Featuring BC108 transistors, it’ll give you a taste of that silicon Fuzz Face experience from drive sounds to fully saturated and decent volume-knob clean-up.
However, it goes beyond that with fine-tuning of the tone via pre- and post fuzz EQ and increased output. The inclusion of a buffer also means the pedal’s placement in a chain can be more flexible – it doesn’t have to be first in the chain for it to receive the correct impedance from your pickups.
Alongside the Volume and Fuzz knobs, the DG Fuzz offers Tone and Grunt controls. The Tone knob set at minimum allows all frequencies through but rolls off the bottom-end as you turn it clockwise. The Grunt knob is part of the internal buffer and works on the input signal before it hits the fuzz section; basically, it can beef up the signal that drives the fuzz for different tonal outcomes. With the Grunt knob at maximum you’re putting the most amount of bass into the fuzz, which – combined with the Tone knob in a low position – gives you a really fat fuzz with loads of sustain that’s great for a rounded liquid lead tone on the neck pickup.
While Grunt is the tone thickener, the Tone knob is more extreme, making the top-end become more dominant as you advance it, to the point of getting scratchy and downright nasty if you keep the Grunt at minimum. Simply put, these two work in conjunction to give you a huge range of just how your fuzz sits in the tonal spectrum, interacting closely with the other two knobs for much more versatility than you’d expect in a fuzzbox of this lineage.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1PWGmFbYJgI&t=2s
Verdict
Delivering a classic strain of fuzz over a broad tonal range, a set of carefully thought-out features endows the DG Fuzz with a flexibility that should see it suited to many players.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QXCPbi_BFpc&t=70s