Fuzz is that dirty thick growl a guitar will make that most people would associate with rock and roll, it gives the impression of a broken amp and is created by using pedals like the Terminal Fuzz. The Terminal Fuzz is based on the legendary Shin Ei Companion FY-2 fuzz from the 70’s but offers more control with dials to regulate the output volume level, treble to reduce or add bite, the voice dial controlling the upper and lower midrange and most important of all, fuzz control. The Terminal fuzz uses analogue circuitry with true bypass switching and is hand made one at a time in Ohio.

When I first started playing I set the voice and fuzz and then tweaked the treble to play around with how clean or grimy I could make the sound, you can bring the fuzz up from a light gritty buzz all the way to an amp shattering synth style sound, similar to the famous riff in Spirit In The Sky. The pedal itself looks great with a cool urban skyline design and is a good piece of construction with the standard dials, it sounds brilliant on either humbuckers or single coils and also sounded great on the bass, nice and dirty. This isn’t a particularly versatile pedal and only offers one type of sound but it’s a strong sound which will dominate your guitars voice, when I mentioned this to a fellow guitar player he responded by saying, “that’s the same as going into a Chinese restaurant and complaining that they only serve Chinese food”, to which I promptly shut up. Saying that this pedal offers a lot of variations within this range and is a lot of fun, it’s such a popular and distinct sound and Terminal Fuzz delivers a delicious distortion that needs to be heard to be believed. Get your ears round some demos of this product and if you become as charmed as I am I’m sure you will agree it is well worth the money.  RRP $165

4.5 out of 5

Buy now

Pros

Solid construction

Produces a lovely Fuzz distortion

Cons

Only offers the one distortion