Product: Analog Man Arbiter Fuzz Face
Price Paid: US $185
Submitted
10/10/2001
at
02:00pm
by
Jake
Ease of Use
:
10
It's about as simple as they come, push the button and mix your fuzz with your volume. If you have a good amp and a good guitar, this will be a welcome effect to your rig, but if you have a solid state or lower line amp or guitar, it's not what you need. Lower line as in Crate or solid state Fenders, I have a Blues Jr. fender and it sounds fine.
Sound Quality
:
9
Damn near perfect, very smooth and thick. I use a Budda Super Drive 30 and a 1963 Fender Princeton Brown Face model, both of them sound great with it. For guitars with this box I use a Gibson Les Paul with Lindy Fralin humbuckers, a telecaster with Seymour Duncan Nashville Studio pick ups, and a strat with Lace Sensors. The fuzz face is not really a noisy pedal believe it or not, I use other single coils and it's not that bad. If you like the Cream era Clapton or Hendrix tunes this is your pedal, I know we'll all heard it a million times "It has that Hendrix tone nailed!" we have also heard "You can loose 30 lbs in 30 days!", but this pedal does come as close as a poor white boy can come to sounding like Hendrix, but with humbuckers, it's all Clapton. It can be difficult to get your own sound out if this unit, but none the less, it can be done.
Reliability
:
No Opinion
I'd gig without a back up, but I'm not going to say it's been dropped in the toilet, laid on the grill, and had beer dumped on it and still takes the bar gigs like a champ either!
Customer Support
:
10
Come on, Mike is the greatest, I know I might sound like the Analog Man spokes person, but seriously, Mike is awesome. I have never had a problem contacting Mike, ever, the longest wait on an e-mail reply was over night!
Overall Rating
:
9
I play classic rock with this unit, but I also play on the lighter side of rock with a Fulltone Fulldrive II (I also have that review posted under Fulltone). If it were stolen, I might not buy an other one simply to try some thing different, on the other hand for $185 was available at the time, I would buy another one and buy some thing different also. The Fulltone is nice for light rock and country, but when you feel the need to play "Purple Haze" all night long so you can watch your neighbors dog run up and down the fence trying to find out where the noise is coming from, you need a Analog Man Fuzz Face.
