I should add that I play a single coil baritone through that mess, and I have left my noise suppressor on the shelf the last year or so. Basically the trick is not to stop playing.
Look into the rigs used by Hate Eternal, Morbid Angel, Immolation and Gorguts. Yeah, they're all oldschool bands, but all of their guitar tones are unique and easily distinguishable from the rest of the pack.
I always thought the tone on Fear Factory's "Obsolete" was a grimey yet tight and it is just a modded JCM 800 and a 7 string with an EMG 81. You could just use a Proco Rat as a boost or any pedal that is half drive half fuzz like the Catalinbread Katzenkonig
I really like using a fuzz pedal and a TS style overdrive in front of it. It doesn't give you a super tight sound, but it absolutely makes it way more usable for riffs, and it makes palm muted actually work.
I'll do you one better, if you get a BOSS SY-300, and use it as a multi fx processor, you can create stereo patches with 3 oscillators (line input included in each oscillator), pan them about halfway from each other (65% away from center). My left side is a hyper fuzz and the right side is a lead distortion. I get my beefy low end, my criso highs, and my mids are nice and clear. It's buzzy and can chug.
You can get a mighty mean tone by boosting a JCM-style amp with a Metal Zone. I'm currently using that on my Doom project with a Peavey Windsor and it sounds very reminiscent of The Vision Bleak's older tones.
Great way to make a fuzz sound more like a tight distortion is take a less extreme style fuzz (I use a mkII tonebender clone) and max the fuzz on it then stick a treble booster behind it and bam all the low end mess gets cleaned up fantastically. So signal path is guitar into treble booster into fuzz into amp. I’d recommend passive pickups for this but if you use higher output pickups or actives then you’re gonna wanna then the boost down a little bit otherwise it becomes too much. This also works with like a ts style overdrive before the fuzz but not as well. Also I use this in the clean channel with no dirt but it might sound good with the amp a bit dirty idk I haven’t tried it.
This is a great tip! I've been messing with this the last few months and it also works Fuzz->Treble Boost-> Amp. I tend to prefer having the fuzz first in line to get that nasty mangled signal, and then have the treble boost afterwards to clean it up. The upside the this is that you can really slam the front end of your amp to saturate that first gain stage if you want.
I'm playing at this moment in a Swamp Sludge/Stoner/Doom Metal band, and hearing the Fuzz instantly takes me to that Sludge feeling, vibe. I'm the guy who will make the fuzz out of control. Awesome one dude.
@@debuenzo my band is called Wülfcrown but there's nothing already recorded. We're working in two splits with bands from Japan and the US of A. Hope to have something soon. Thanks for the interest bro.
I think the Axe FX is the new modern metal sound. Bands are making sounds/tones with those things that can't be replicated with tube amps + real gear. That said...Marshall 2205 + RAT pedal was my go-to back in the day. Not fuzzy. Not distorted. Ended up being something in between.
I recorded a new song double tracked with different distortion/fuzz combinations. Guitar A was with a Tube Screamer going into a Russian Pickle Fuzz. Guitar B was a Tube Screamer going into a Rat pedal. Huge wall of sound when both tracks are engaged in stereo.
YEESSS! And don't forget to mention, that the part of the secret to your dirty, but still somehow tight sound is your amazing Fernandes baritone guitar! Scale means a lot when you use lower tunings, because it controls the strings tension. Right tension in the strings makes any gain and low frequencies more controllable. A quantity of srings is nothing but more scale length for that solid punchy tone with a lot of clarity. To tell the long story short: strings 27'
@@lobster272 But he also uses a lot of vintage Traynor and Peavey amps which get pretty fuzzy when dimed out. I have a "73 Traynor Custom Reverb and a '79 Peavey Century (the good ones with the sweepable mids) and they are both total stonerville even half dimed. I've read that he runs similar amps dimed with a tube screamer running into them going into various 4x12 cabs. Along with a myriad of other higher gain amps as well of course. So maybe he doesn't use "fuzz" pedals exactly but he definitely uses a lot of fuzzy sounds in the mix. Of course, the fuzz that comes from these amps is tighter, more organic, more controllable than what you would get with say a Big Muff or one of the Earthquaker devices style fuzz pedals and they do blend quite nicely with HM2 derived sounds.
Pro Tip: take a super thick fuzz with a shit ton of low end and mids and throw a tight drive in front of it. Example: Frost Giant Soma with a Pepers' Pedals Dirty Tree in front of it.
I’ve come to fall in love with fuzz pedals. Most people with a cello when they play distortion go high up. I like the low end infinite sustain I can get with a bow. It only takes crunch levels of distortion to turn a cello’s sound to being super dirty. Suddenly you add fuzz to the equation. It would blow the world away.
Awesome video! I wish more people would tweak their sound a bit to get more unique tones. We are reamping our album with a blend of boosted 5150 and a Butcher, HM-2, multiple mics, and a mix of speakers. I love coming up with unique yet familiar tones 🤘🏻
Great video. A luxury to hear so many great dirt pedals. I have a power trio. A journalist said my music has a SABBATH vibe but with a Prog Rock sensibility. My pedal board is virtually wired as 4 pedal boards. I use a switcher to switch between them. Each one has about 20 pedals with a compressor, a choice of dirt pedals a gate. delay and reverb. Some have modulation pedals. This allows for dramatic changes between the verse, chorus, mid 8 bridges etc. So I go from low gain pedals for flat picking ...to medium and high gain Marshall type sounds to modern Metal sounds even doom sounds with both OD's and Fuzz pedals. We do my 26 tunes and I use every one of my 72 pedals. In most tunes I use 3 different dirt sounds. I am always looking for better. The Okko Black Beast is a 'must have' Okko also do the Dominator which they put out 15 years ago. They have updated it so it has a balance between the really, really heavy old school and a modern Metal. You will not use on every tune but it killer to write some 'grinders' with. Get your tempo down between 75 to 100 bpm. You will find you come with some really cool new ideas.
I feel this is one area the digital domain has a leg up. The only downside is setting up a rig for live use. Although the cost of doing that nowadays isn't super crazy.
The trick is to use a cranked mid boost before the fuzz with the fuzz gain backed off a bit. Hard clipping is still hard clipping, but it will tighten up the bass some. I have gotten a pretty passable metal tone with a Rat boosted in this way, although the Rat isn't a fuzz, more of a distortion, and the Big Muff works in a similar way if you want a thick and scooped distortion. Big Muff typically wrecks your bass like a fuzz, but mid boosting cleans it up.
This is the kind of sound I like, heavy AF but still controlled. I'm running a TH30 with the gain at about 2:30 with an old school MXR 10 band in the loop to remove some of the boomy low end but keep the depth and sculpt the mids.
I find some, especially cheap, fuzz pedals work great into gain channels as boosts. Fuzz/drive all the way down, tone just over 12 o'clock, volume up. It has a similar effect as the tone in your video. Acts like a tube screamer but with a bit more grit. Instead for a tube screamer in front of a fuzz a top boost or mid boost also tames the fuzz bottom end well.
@Kohle: Have you tried the Earthquaker Hoof Fuzz? I was wondering the same thing, I wanted to play tight rhythm with a doomier sound - and that was what I found after testing anything I could get my hands on. It allowed palm mutes with tight attack and a punching yet doomy bass - it's a lovely thing. I used it in front of an Orange Rocker (great amp), sounded great solo on the "clean-but-not-clean"-channel, and just roared on the dirty channel, without making it muddy and flat, still tight. And it doesn't lack in that typical fuzz sustain either. beautiful.
Nice! This pretty much confirms a lot of my approach to distortion and fuzz when playing Doom. When you engage the Black Beast, its reminiscent of a Marshall Mode 4 head distortion. Its the reason not a lot of people liked it for pure high gain, but it has that same "fuzzed up" quality. I use a Mode 4 for playing Doom metal for that very reason. The problem for me with purely fuzz based doom tones (typically Orange amp clean channels with a black russian Big Muff or Proco Rat in front of it) is that you lose the palm mute "crunch". Having a tube screamer or boost in the mix can bring that back, but hearing this, im hearing the same dirty distortion qualities as my MF350.
i was actually just considering running a "metal distortion" through a fuzz face and vice versa to see what i end up with. might update later if its got good results.
I am a big fan of fuzz. I use a Way Huge Swollen Pickle pedal (best named pedal ever) on a clean amp channel with a touch of reverb and sometimes a bit of flanger just for giggles. With the Pickle dialed back, it's right on that edge of distortion and fuzz. Clear enough for some palm mutes and power chords and lets single notes shine thru. Still best with slower tempos but certainly not restricted to only stoner and doom metal.
Hey, Kohle! You need to try the Karma Suture (germanium fuzz pedal), from Catalin Bread, used in front of the hi gain channel of a metal amp. Use it like you would use a tubescreamer! Sounds awesome! I've been using this setup with an Engl Powerball. It's weird but, it's like the pedal gives the amp another set of balls, it does something i can't explain to its attack that is thick and balsy, but without the typical "spit" of most fuzzes! Great video, hugs!
i just got me the Jive pedal. it´s awesome. adds really interesting textures to your tone. and it seems the LED has been adressed. mine isn´t that bright at all. thanks for the suggestion, Chris.
To tame the lows it might be interesting to try some multiband distortion pedals and/or a combination of different pedals run in parallel through a high/low crossover pedal.
Would love to see you do a video on running your guitars through a bunch of household appliances and other crazy shit... light bulbs, drill, vibrator... things I'm sure you've got laying around the studio haha
@@KohleAudioKult I believe you split and divert the speaker out cable into different types of lighbulbs (as a resistor - compressor basically) and then back into the cab... or other appliances for different sounds... Id do a little research first, but sounds like you might be about to have some fun man! Keep up all the great work man, much appreciated. You're a legend brother!
I’ve recently been playing with a similar idea. I have the Old Blood Noise Haunt Fuzz and drive it with a Behringer SF300. I use the mix knob on the Haunt to blend to taste. Just waiting on delivery of my Oh My Goat ;) to blend that in place of the SF300
Your videos are getting better and better !!! This video is very refreshing and really different to what you would find from the main stream Metal RU-vidrs !! I really enjoyed every second of it. Interesting to hear a studio, producer guy explore sounds that are not tight and controlled 😄 !! I believe one of the limit of metal guys today, is we are all afraid to disappear in the mix if our tone is not tight, with a lot of brightness and bite. I think one great example of unconventional metal tones is Rabea Massaad in Toska. He's as well a big Fuzz user. Well he's the only guitar in the mix and the bass guy is super tight and focused so he has monstrous wall of sound metal tones !!!
I play doom metal, but my sound is closer to Aaron from Paradise Lost. I use a 25.5" scale Schecter super strat with 11-56 D'Addarios and the Bare Knuckle alnico Black Hawk pickup set into an MXR/CAE MC401 clean boost into the Crunch channel of a Peavey JSX, with a cab that has a mix of V30s and H75 Creambacks. I think the alnico Black Hawk is the secret. It has a combo of tight with a dirty low mid purr. Besides that I just have an MS-3 for effects in the loop. I also run an MXR M77 (SD-1 clone) into the Ultra channel of the JSX for the lead sound, with a delay from the MS-3. The only mod to the JSX is Tung Sol 6L6GC-STR quad with new SGRs. This works in well with a nastier sound from our other guitarist through the lead channel of a 6534+ and V30 412
Aaron is great! He is also using my Grindstein pedal by the way. Sounds like you should check it out too! Interesting setup. I should checkout the Creamback H. I didn't like the M though.
@@JanXD yeah that's what i go for with any tone, maybe a little cleaner or a little dirtier depending on how i'm playing. Either that or nirvana style with a boss bass drive and a chorus but this is not the place for that tone haha
That was fun and inspirational, as always. I feel Will Putney does a good job in getting more distortion and mayhem into modern extreme metal, for example on The Sea of Tragic Beasts by Fit For An Autopsy.
A lot of the gnarly overtones and nastiness you bring up are exactly why I love the Proco Rat and the HM2 so much. That Okko Black Beast reminds me a lot of a Proco Rat, would not be surprised if the circuit is similar. Gotta run that Grindstein in the crunch or lead channel for some proper chainsaw tone. Clean channels or power amps just can't quite get there. ;p
Rats are amazing for doom sounds, and are super versatile. You can use it as a boost, you can boost it, you can use it like a fuzz, or you can use it as a distortion. On of the greatest dirt pedals. Big Muffs are awesome too. I have a standard Big Muff, but I also have a Mojo Hand Colossus, which is a Big Muff on crack with a mid control and a 3 position switch for low end shape. It's rough, chaotic and grinding, but the low end is big, thumpy and tight almost like a metal pedal, and mids allow you to solve the Muff getting lost problem. It's got far more character than any amp distortion.
Modern, overdriven, or clean 2 effects never get turned off in my chain. 1. JHS - Morning Glory (blue side, everything at 12 o'clock) 2. BBE Sonic Maximizer. Those two things just make everything sound better and tighter. The morning Glory is just magic. Especially for single coil clean tones. But even dirty it just adds a presence that my Friedman doesn't have. And love it or hate it I'm sorry the Sonic Maximizer just adds so much punch and saturation like nothing else. I use the rack version and all the hate I've ever seen for it were from the pedal version. I'm sure you've seen them around. But for sure checkout the Morning Glory IMO it's as magical as a Klon or King of Tone.
This seems like the kind of thing the Metal Muff aimed for, but maybe missed. Could be the ear-splitting treble boost on that pedal; who knows? Some of these tones reminded me of Kim Thayil around Badmotorfinger-era Soundgarden. There is definitely a place for fuzz in metal, but I hate that synthy-bitcrusher-with-Soldano-sizzle that a typical Big Muff or generic fuzz does on the lower register. Some fancy DSP company will figure out a dynamic EQ shifting algorithm that adds a treble-charger and backs off the gain a bit once you get below the D string. The high D string, I mean, depending on your downtuning 😂
In my expereience fuzz pedals sound better with passive PU, EMGs can sound weird through fuzz. Even using a pedal with a buffer before a fuzz can make it sound like shit.
@@plumbummusic2051 I think every album. Certainly from Blessed are the Sick onwards. Every albums production is quite different, but if you listen to the guitars you can hear that trademark rat sound regardless of how different the albums sound.
What always worked best for me is ProCo Rat into overdriven channel of my amp and fiddle with the filter knob to find the sweet spot. Lots of nice and good nastiness that way Also, for guitarists on the budget, EHX Metal muff alone sounds pretty great
I love this. I was always torn between a real dirty fuzzy distortion and the modern tight distortion sound for my guitar playing and could not bring it together for the life of me. Question: I see you put the overdrive in front of the fuzz/distortion pedals. Is there a specific reason why it is not the other way around? Because I was told it is best to put the overdrive after fuzz/distortion pedals.
Thanks! Mainly because you want to tighten the lowend BEFORE you hit the fuzz. This means there's less lowend going into the fuzz causing less loose and farty distortion.
That Jupiter FX sounded really dirty as well Okko Black Beast. Have you tried fuzz pedals made for bass? They have typical a blend knob, where you can dial in that dry tone again. Another option would be a Boss LS-2 or EHX TriParallel Mixer to run two or even three pedals in parallel. So a fuzz and another dirt pedal would be an option.
I have been searching for the same thing. I use a Fuzzlord Troglodyte with a jhs series3 distortion or DOD 250 in front of it. Into a clean amp. I bought the Jupiter pedal, thanks for the discount
Hell, Cannibal Corpse got both more extreme and had an even more crazy high gain sound, especially when they were boosting triple recs with metal zones.
I've waited years when some tech geeks release a truly dynamic distortion where you can have both; Entombed-like low-end gurgle and hard hitting dist for palm mutes. This actually starts to get near.
I was just thinking about how conceptually, something like a Boss DA-2 would be useful in a fuzz; I love the fat, compressed lead tones of a fuzz higher up the neck, but detest the lame, bit-crusher non-chug of the low end. A pedal that basically changes the EQ shift and maybe some gain characteristics as you descend frequency would make a metal fuzz that's actually practical AND nasty, my favorite type of relationship.
@@iwannabeyourshirt That freq. selective behaviour is just what I assume should do the trick. Combine different x-pass filters, split the signal to different dists and combine it in the end. This should be feasible with current tech.
I agree, the Tubescreamer can help to tame the otherwise unusable fuzz coming outta nother pedal. Mainly only cuz it's hard to find a good fuzz while stuck at home, I had to make do with the other "fuzz" I already have now: an OLD DigiTech Grunge. I got that one as part of a set of second hand pedals full of Ibanez Series 7 pedals (including the SM7 Smash Box, which is what I really wanted) plus a bunch of other pedals including the Grunge. For the longest time I've never really played much with it cuz it's a "bit" too uncontrolled. However during the past year (2020), with one being stuck at home with lots of extra time and less things to do, I started messing around those pedals in my "unusable" pile. With a Tubescreamer (I'm using the TS7 Ton-Lok version) it becomes a bit more manageable and actually sounds fairly good. However, not good enough to topple my current pedals for the heavier hairy side: Ibanez SM7 Smash Box, or my occasional alt, the MT-2 Metal Zone (which is admittedly finicky as hell AND prefers to be in the amp's return loop).
Seems like the thing that these pedals do is bring in the character that I really love from Orange amplifiers but with the benefit of being able to also double track a more defined sound with the same amplifier by just disengaging the pedal and swapping in an SD-1/tubescreamer instead of having to worry about needing two amps. Upgraded my Tiny Terror to a BluAmp for the sake of practicality and the one thing it lacks is a more gnarly distortion. Will be on the lookout for something like this once I'm moved to a place where I can keep more than just my acoustic guitar
@@KohleAudioKult it's not modelling, it's a hybrid amp based around an atypical valve type that the company acquired through ex-Soviet military surplus as NOS. You get a pretty good build quality and a built in noise gate (amp is very noisy with it disengaged but it does a very good job keeping out of the way), plus a lot of adjustability in tones but it's definitely more of a Marshall/Laney kind of sound than the orange I used to use. Cleans are very good on it though, kind of fender-like and it has a decent speaker-emulated output for what it is (it's probably not as good as what you'd get now on line 6 or Kemper but I decided that getting something that works as hardware alone and wouldn't need firmware updates would be a more reliable long-term investment)
Good stuff man! I was having trouble as well getting an articulate enough tone trying while still being massive and fuzzy. I now use 2 amps. 1 with super extra fuzz and lows and the other with a tight modern tone and blend the volumes. Each through a 2x12 (:
@@KohleAudioKult thanks for your reply! My aby pedal has phase switching and ground lifts on each output to help with that stuff. Cheers! from Tacoma, WA
I have been experimenting with this for sometime. It has been quite enjoyable. Rabea Massaad uses this as well. Tasteful introduction of fuzz with a high gain tone gives a lot of thickness and character.
For a fuzz (I mainly use fuzz for bass) I have an MXR Super Badass Variac Fuzz, which allows you to adjust volume and voltage. Has a lot of tones in it.
Well...I'm getting pretty good results with the DOD Carcosa (which is quite cheap and even cheaper when you build the PedalPCB kit from das Musikding). It has a Bias Control for the fuzz (others have that too like the Basic Audio Scarab but that's more of a vintage fuzz), so you can set it up as a dirt pedal with a bit of fuzz flavour. Pump that into a crunch channel and you got something quite useable.
Also for fuzz pedals it's Black Arts Toneworks, Pharaoh being the most recognised from his offer, but in general the guys has his fuzz, dirty distortion game on point so picking other pedal from him might do it for you. Or his cooperation with DOD, Boneshaker
Try out the DOD Carcossa fuzz. It is based on a Tonebender, but modernized. It has an enormous amount of volume. And the fuzz can be very subtle. I've found myself using it as an alternative to Tube Screamers and other common "modern" overdrives that are used to sculpt the sound prior to hitting the amp.
I still use most of the rig I had in '95. A Rhoads EX-->FX69 Grunge-->FX40B-->Peavey Bandit Red Stripe 112. The Peavey replaced my '94 Marshall ValveState 8080 in '03.
I use an FX86, a Bandit 65 and a Master Effects Martyr which is basically the preamp from that Valvestate as a pedal. Mind you, I use all of those things as preamps in front of a Mooer Radar instead of running the distortion pedals into the Bandit. I've also got a Crate GX and a Metal Zone... Apparently my tone is a mix of all of the 90s most hated gear.
@@skaldlouiscyphre2453 I hear ya. I actually can get a decent sound out of mine. It's definitely got a Swedish chainsaw vibe, even though my garage band played stuff like Sabbath, AuC and Godsmack.
My favorite tone is my Mooer preamp live emulating an ENGL Blackmore with a Maxon 808 overdrive going through the Rattlesnake IR from your Eminence Metal IR pack! It sounds amazing!
First time i recorded i used my Marshall 2204 at max with an blackstar tube overdrive. At the same time i used an bogner alcemist at clean with heavy bass setting and almost no treble at all. I used a german built custom guitar with duncan sh-2and sh-6 in it. the bogner and the guitar is history. I generally don't like the modern metal sounds. But there is always something good with all genres of music. i might hate most of it. but there is always something.
My preference for fucked up yet tight tone is a Way Huge “swollen pickle” with the gain knob at 0, the filter knob at 1 o’clock and everything else at 10. Use that in place of a tube screamer to boost your amp.
I know Knocked Loose uses the Way Huge Swollen Pickle on parts. Along with a 5150 and Duel Rec, and Mesa cabs, but just having that one change in pedals does help freshen up the tone a lot. They also throw some chorus on parts, which I'm really into. Like a heavier version of Zakk Wylde's tone.
I have a hail satan fuzz from Abominable Electronics that instantly gets that Doom/Stoner sound, but it has a dry/wet blend on it, and after seeing this, I bet I could get something really cool putting it in front of the blue channel of my EVH stealth and blending in a bit of the fuzz.
Man, I've been looking for a video like this for a long time!!! It always amazed me how "normie" guitarists just love fuzz, while metalheads - myself included - seem to hate it (and for good reason). It seems no one was addressing it before, but you managed not only to talk about it, but also to incorporate it into metal, with surprisingly interesting results! Personally, I still don't like it very much: fuzz just sounds broken to me, and not in a good way. But surely there must be some specific applications for it, when it fits the theme of the song. Kudos from Brazil!!!
Nothing sounds more brutal for long power chords than a good fuzz. Problem is they don't like palm mutes. Sunn 0))) uses Rats into Sunn amps, which are one the few amps produced in any numbers that aren't built on the Bassman or Blackface circuits, and were adapted from hifi amps. The Sunn engineers thought distortion was the devil and tried to create the most clean and powerful amps they could. All this to say that band's tone is almost entirely Rat, probably boosted Rat. It's not to everyone's taste, but it's possibly some of the most evil sounding music ever made.
Intro Sounds awesome! I used a Fuzz (Blackout Effectors Blunderbuss Fuzz) as a boost for years. Last summer I also used a Behringer SF300 on the Fuzz 1 setting alongside a HM2 clone in the studio to get a really disgustingly awesome tone for a part of a song. If you want to use a Fuzz for a metal tones I would suggest to use it as a boost like a Tubescreamer, Fuzz pedals have more character tough. The Behringer SF300 on the boost setting is a damn nice OD pedal as well, sounds way better than the 23€ it costs!
Hey, the first pedal is the one i liked the most. I'd be really curious in knowing how that would work with other distortion pedals in series (more than just a ts) on the brunetti clean channel.
Hey Kristan, you said that the HM-2 is a nightmare in the studio. I agree with you, I've been trying to record with one, sending it directly into my audio interface and using an amp sim with it. I've never managed to make it sound good and make it fit in a mix. A video on how to use the HM-2 (and the Grindstein) with an IR in a mix would be awesome.
I have done videos like this about the Grindstein. It’s basically just plug and play with the included IRs. Have a look at the Grindstein playlist on this channel.
I've seen a few videos where they used the swollen pickle fuzz in the same style as an overdrive and it sounded good. Don't know if it's one if the fuzzed you tried or not. I think now I'm gonna go play with a few pedals and see what I can make happen.
interesting experiment, I do prefer the second attempt, but I find the first one sounds much better in the mix than with the guitar alone. My type of sound stands somewhere between Havok (especially their album 'time is up') and Pete Cottrell. Fat, precise, tight on the low end but not fuzzy at all :)
If you want a mix of distortion and fuzz then there's no better pedal than Dwarfcraft The Internet Overdrive pedal, which is a coiple of EHX LPB-1 circuits one after another and a clipping diode. Together, depending on how you tweak them, they go from very subtle, but melancholic overdrive, to an oversaturated flat boosted something that sounds like a distortion and a fuzz at the same time. Dwarfcraft have closed down as a business but you can still get them used, and I hope someone will start making clones of these soon.
You guys should check out the DOD Boneshaker. I don't see too many of them around, but its awesome for this kind of gross proto HM-2 nastiness. I'd say its more of a fuzzy boost than a distortion pedal, but it definitely excels doing this kind of thing.
