Dunlop Jimi Hendrix Fuzz

Easy as pie, Volume knob and Fuzz knob. Turn to your liking. This time 'round Dunlop offers sound settings for the effect. "Bold As Love" "Dark Fuzz" and something else I can't remember. I haven't tried the settings, I'm happy with where I have it.

I'm giving it a 10 cuz usually Dunlop puts out shitty Fuzz Faces, this new one is awesome sounding. I'm put it through my 1987X Ri Marshall, and I'm using a Fender Strat '57 Ri with a HS-2 in the bridge. As a side note, I set my plexi pretty warm. This new FF sounds pretty sweet on any of the pick-ups! It has great tone, and it was full sounding, not sterile like Dunlop's previous attempts. When you fret the low E, A, D, there's almost a horn quality to the sound. It's so huge sounding! Also when you let the note fade you get that cool crackling sound that you can hear when Hendrix was going into "Rollin' Stone", or even "Wild Thing", in Monterey, although I think he's using a NKT loaded Face, but through all the Faces I've owned I never got that crackle. There's a good amount of sustain and this box lets your guitar ring some sweet feedback even when the volume is at 9 o'clock. Mines not too noisy but they're prolly all different, were you have your amp set at is a factor for noise too. I can also get pretty close to EJ type of fuzz tone too. I was able to get closer to "12 by 12 Vibe" then ever before, of course he puts his Face through a 6L6 loaded Plexi so that's a factor, but I can get close!

Well, I'm sure it will last for a long time. I own a Dunlop blue FF from the early 90's and it still works... it just sounds like shit.

Never talked to them so I have no idea.

I play a combo of blues and various styles of rock. I'm a Fuzz Face fan from listening to Hendrix albums, so through the years a Fuzz Face can always be found on my board. This new Fuzz Face is a nice addition. It's a good match for my style and likes. It actually replaced my 80's Fuzz Face (from Dave Fox) that's been on my board forever. Prob with the 80's FF is that it's not 100% Si. I love the Si FFaces so I had to try this new Dunlop FF and was pleasantly surprised. If stolen I would certainly buy another! I love the sound a 100% Si Fuzz gives and Dunlop (with the help from the "Way Huge" effects maker) did a fabulous job making a quality Fuzz Face. It's huge sounding and has loads of Fuzz. It kicks the ass of any previous Dunlop Fuzz Faces.

Most people say "two knobs... how hard can it be?"

There are actually a TON of tones between messing with the Volume and Fuzz knobs on the unit, AND using your guitar's volume and tone knobs.

So the answer is.... what does your ear like???

Within minutes I had dialed in a Gilmour, Cream, Hendrix, Eric Johnson, Guess Who... etc

Players need to know about fuzz before they buy one!!!
They need to know what it takes to get the different tones out of a fuzz before they give it a bad review.

It is NOT distorion.
It is not overdrive.
IT IS FUZZ!!!!!

I have tried many different combinations of variables... single coils, humbuckers, different amps (all tube amps), PLAYING WITH DIFFERENT DYNAMICS!!!, playing with guitar knobs, etc..... sounds GREAT WITH ALL!!!

I must say that Dunlop made a right move making this beauty!!

I just sold my Analogman Sunlion with NOS NKT-275s... due to lack of playing out....
So I wanted a fuzz that was under $200 that sounded as good as could be for not being a high end boutique pedal.

THIS IS THE ONE!!! I was gonna get a FOXROX HOT Si Fuzz... but I got a good deal on this reissue and thought I would try it first.

Compared to NKT-275s, the BC-108s are MUCH MUCH brighter and can get REALLY crazier fuzz when the fuzz knob is cranked.

To my surprise they clean up wonderfully! They do not get as clean as the NKT-275s though.... however they clean up enough to get an LARGE array of tones!!

I have played for 15+ years, and I have been through MANY fuzzes. If I was gigging enough to justify having a Analogman BC-108 fuzz I would probably get it for boutique sake... until then the BC-108 stays.

It sounds infinitely better than anything in its price range (I never thought I would say that about Dunlop)!!!!

I have had NO noise issues, it is surprisingly very quiet!!!
I have a Foxrox retrofit in my wah and it sounds DYNAMITE through this fuzz!!!

My setup....

PRS Hollowbody->Thomas Organ Wah(w/True bypass & F.R.retrofit)->
BC-108 Fuzz-> Analogman TS-808 Silver Mod w/true bypass-> Stereo Electric Mistress-> Maxon AD-900 w/true bypass-> Modded Peavey Classic 30 w/celestion classic 30.

It is hand wired and true bypassed by the Way Huge Creator!!!!

A definite MUST for any fuzz head!!!

Built like a tank!!!

Wish it had a battery holder though.... i'm gonna rig something to keep it from clanking around... this is my only complaint!!!

I emailed the s**t out of the technical service about specific questions... probably 7 emails.

I received my answers the day I asked the question!!!

Freaking awesome!!!!!!

A must for the fuzz head that wants to save big bucks and get a versatile piece of work.

After trying since 1969 to replace my lost original silicon Fuzz Face, and trying out what seems like a zillion other pedals ( including the full array of Dunlop's other attempts at making a workable Fuzz Face ), I'm nothing short of thrilled to report that the new JHF-1 Jimi Hendrix Fuzz Face is everything it's cracked up to be. I'm told a glowing review here on Harmony Central may not get printed because 'nothing's perfect,' but I've yet to find a flaw. This thing is a total no brainer. Just make sure you have a battery in it ( some may consider the lack of a wall wart option a detriment, knowing how Fuzz Face's operate, I don't ), plug it in and let it rip! There's nothing more than a volume, fuzz control and on / off button for the effect to deal with.

This thing absolutely nails the Hendrix sound. And believe it or not, you can be roaring along like a freight train and stop dead in your tracks and it's as quiet as a mouse. NONE of the other pedals I tried could hope for such a claim ( the Big Muff is a joke next to this baby ). It sings like a bird, fast single note lines don't mush out, they are completely defined and sharp as hell. It doesn't have that overly bassey sound of the other reissues. You can also use the neck pickup for those sweet Wind Cries Mary tones. Another cool thing about it is that you can back off your volume and it cleans up beautifully, without a noticable sudden drop as you roll off the volume on your guitar. I ran it through my two Vox AC30 stacks using my 1991 Fender Jeff Beck strat at concert level and it was like coming home! I used several originals back in the '60s and this thing made my dreams come true. I'm not sure I'll even take out my beloved RAT anymore, and that's saying a lot. Nothing has ever beat the indestructible RAT. You can easily get that Cream style Clapton woman tone, a good example would be the sound on Sunshine Of Your Love or SWABLR. Harmonics jump out of this pedal like nothing I've ever seen. I've been playing for 45 years, that's a ton of experience to go on.

Just got it, the very first one in Hollywood in fact. The construction is solid. Dunlop wasn't kidding around about the hand wiring either. I may take out my RAT on the first few gigs, but only as a precaution. I really don't think I'll ever need it again. I see no problem taking it out without a backup, but I'll put it through the ringer and post again if any problems arise. i never had any problems with the other Dunlop Fuzz Faces other than the fact they didn't get the sound. Next to this, they're garbage. So until the real torture test, I'll give it a nine. I have no doubt it will acheive a ten though.

Dunlop is easy to get ahold of and they've been very helpful to me, so I'm not forseeing any problems in that regard. They'll get right on the phone with you.

As I said, I've been playing professionally for 45 years in every situation imaginable. I'm into blues, rock, alternative styles and even pop-punk. The JHF-1 seems to work great with all of these styles, it tailors very easily. If someone steals it, I hope they make it out of the country. The first ones shipped two weeks ago and they're already on back order. I really believe that once word gets out that they actually deliver the real deal, this will be the hardest guitar pedal in the nation to get your hands on. It really is that hot. If you're into that beautiful, musical singing tone, you will fall in love with it. Hopefully, there will be a consistancy - in other words, that all of the pedals will have much the same tone. The old Fuzz Face's were a crap shoot, you never knew what you were gonna get from pedal to pedal.

Need to place it in different spots in the effects chain such as in front of your sparkle drive or tubescreamer etc.. Then you must take it apart while it is in line and mess with the small pots until you get the sound you hear in your head. Must also take it apart to replace battery.

I was looking for a pedal to get me over the top on lead notes to get more sustain as it were, to make the notes sing and this pedal helps. You can use the pedal by itself to get the 60s sounds for rhythm. There is some noise when on but its not that bad when on stage next to a loud drummer. Mine works great with stock 80s Fender American Strat and use a clean setting on tube amps such as Fender Princeton Reverb with Jensen 10 or 90s Blues Deluxe with Weber 12. For vintage ZZ Top type tone I use a Gibson Flying V with switched out Alnico magnets in both stock ceramic pickups. This sounds very good.

This pedal is built.

None needed.

Listen carefully to Jimi or Stevie and that one note you like so much just before he hits it he hits this pedal or one like it (fuzz) and this pedal can do it. Ive been playing off and on for 27 years and went through a lot of different effect pedals. Its not what you got but what you do with what you got, this pedal is not the holy grail but I like it once I got it to work with my sparkle drive and wah pedal. I also got a Vox Tone Bender and a Marshall Shred Master but this Dunlop Jimi Hendrix Fuzz in the small red box is the one I use for over the top type distortion or fuzz. You can also dial in 60s type distortion when used by itself. Because you need to take it apart to change the battery I rate it a 9.

Easy enough, but the volume knob is a little touchy.

HERE IS THE FINAL WORD ON THIS PEDAL!!! This is a great "hendrix" sounding silicon fuzz face pedal. The main reason they didn't sell, and received some bad reviews is because Dunlop did not set the bias adustment correctly from the factory!!! I use to hate this pedal when I first bought it. It sounded like a cheap, harsh distortion box. But, after fiddling with the two internal adjustments, it came REAL close to the Roger Mayer "Axis" Fuzz!!! Even better in some respects! There were times when I couldn't tell them apart, and they were on equal turf with sustain. The Axis was a little smoother, with a bigger bottom, and more output, and produced an "authentic" fuzz tone - complete with the "dying battery sag". A true "boutique" pedal. And, was more useable at lower gain settings. The Dunlop was thinner, and had a much sharper, tighter attack, making it very good on rhythms. BUT, THE DUNLOP GAVE YOU THAT "HERD OF SCREAMING ELEPHANTS"-tone like Jimi at woodstock!!! There is a touch of harmonic feedback built right into the fuzz effect. This was due to my precise internal tweaking. There are two adjustments. The lower-left one is the bias, and the upper-right one seems to effect the gain, and brightness. (NOTE: Fender amps are NOT recomended for a silicon fuzz face!!! You will get an overly-bright, raspy, nasty tone. However, I got mine to sound great through my 80's Champ 12) First, Set both of these tiny pots fully counter-clockwise. Then, slowly turn the bias just a wee bit! You will hear a little static like a dirty pot. Right around there you will find this perfect spot with maximum sutain, and that aforementioned harmonic feedback (you'll know it when you fing it), and you should also notice a cleaner, less "farty" bottom-end. Once you've nailed that, turn the other pot back just a little bit to warm-up that raspy treble. BUT not so much that you lose the sustain, and wild harmonics. It would be nice if this pedal had a bigger low-end, and had a touch more warmth. But hey, for $50, you can't go wrong with this thing! If you have any questions about this, or any other pedal, e-mail me at freedomfuzz@aol.com

Vey reliable. Built like a brick shit house. However, be REALLY careful when you disassemble it.

I don't know. I haven't had much experience with them.

This one was great for the money, and was highly overlooked. I have some major beefs with Dunlop/MXR pedals. They make some great ones, no doubt. But for example, the MXR Phase 100 is only useful as a door-jam, or paper-weight. And, the "Stereo Uni-vibe" just doesn't sound like a Uni-vibe. And, the stereo feature is a joke. That pedal just plain sucks.

2 controls fuzz voulme not rocket science but theres an array on tones in this pedal if you know anything at all about stomp boxes unlike most of the reviewers on this page this is the red pedal small square version

im giving it a 9 because of the way its built. Ok here comes a speech
vintage Stomp boxes(classicFUzz) with germanium trasistors purpose to push the front end of a """tube""" amp like the other guy(which is the only guy on the page that knows what hes talking about mentioned these were designd with marshall in mind actually it was design for a 200watt super plexi lead jimi liked amps. ok this how you do it you get a a tube amp heres an example 65 twin reverb reissue volume 4 trevble 5 mid 3-4 bass 5-6 reverb 3 ok then hook up a overdrive u know tube screamer maxon od808 blues drivers what ever after that hook up the fuzz thats how you get it to work the od must be on its design to fuzz an amp thats alreadyy got distortion or overdrive turned on. bigg muff pies and arbiters are focused on more of a smooth fuzz this is in ur face but it if you know ur guitar if you know ur tone. EMAIl me for questions ho to get it working if you think this pedal is wimmpy id be happy to solve ur problem.

well i fix my own pedals when they break but this dont look like its gonna break. metal casing

never dealt with them

this is the fuzz pedal with good parts made for good amps and good guitars dont buy it expecting it to make ur amp sound great

This thing is brilliant because it's simple.I really hate pedals and such that advertise '5 pedals in one' or 'You'll never need another (something) again!'. This fuzz pedal is a no-nonsense, top quality unit.
First up, lets just get this straight: There are a couple of kinds of Jimmy Hendrix Fuzz pedals. This is the JH-2SM - The small red rectangle one, not the round flat one. Dont know what the differece is.

The bass player and other guitarist in my band both use Big Muff Pi's so i wanted a differnt pedal so we could get some kind of separation between the guitars.

When i bought this thing it came down to either this or the boss FZ-3. After about an hour of playing around in the shop, i settled on this simply because i could get a good sound on practically any setting (though i like it best almost full fuzz) whereas the Boss pedal took a bit of fiddling to get a decent sound.

I use an Australian Maton MS500 into a Marshall JCM-900. In the store i managed to hook up basically the same equipment and also tried it with some other guitars. Using a tele this pedal sounded CRAP, but from an LP or the maton its really smooth. Maybe its the humbuckers, i dunno.

Couple of drawbacks - you need the volume knob cranked pretty high to get it loud enough, but you dont need it up full (it does get pretty freakin loud, forget these other people that say it is not loud enough to gig with). And since you crank it you do get some noise through it but not so much that anyone would care.

Oh one other thing, it doesnt give good feed back. I also use a Boss MT-2 Metal Zone on my pedal board for the times i want that harder sound or to get feedback.

As for the actual tone of this thing, its great. I bought the pedal after playing a bunch in a store and choosing the one i thought sounded the best. After i got it home i looked it up on here and was suprised to see so many people bagging it. People are complaining it has no bottom end, but i dont see that at all.

I use it with the fuzz up about 3/4 and I manage to get a really good dirty fuzz sound ala Stockholm Syndrome / Plug in baby by Muse, which is just how want it.

Oh yeh and ill just mention, this pedal works nicely in that it really picks up how hard you are strumming. Light strumming = lighter fuzz, hard strumming = lots of fuzz. Wicked.

It's built like a brick sh*thouse, i dont think the incredible hulk could break it.

The only thing i noticed is that you can just pull the knobs off without much effort, but this might have been inentional by the manufacturers for cleaning purposes or somehting, because it really seems that way. Not like its broken.

The switch has a very smooth and direct click so you know you've pressed it and it doesnt jam or anything.

None yet.

We play original post-grunge rock kinda stuff... Influenced by bands like Smashing Pumpkins, Muse, Queens of the stone age, Tool, A Perfect Circle, Pearl Jam, Silverchair.. you get it

Works a treat. As i said before i also have a Boss Metal Zone so between these two i get exactly what i want.

It was a little expensive, but not bad. And it's quality. Should last forever.

I dunno if they allow this but this is my band http://listen.to/miraclehat

Well, 2 knobs, Fuzz and Volume, so easier is a jack.

It's noisy, I use it with both HB guitars (Gibson Firebird) and Single coils (Fender Tele) and that goes to the amp. Really interesting with a tube amp (here it's a Laney one), need to get the volume more than 3/4 to be louder than clean. The fuzz often goes to unpredictable ways, I really like to send it into the wha to control the frequencies and obtain synth-like dirty sounds. You can go Hendrix to Fripp things, really big growling fuzz, nasty on low single note licks, singing when playing slide on higher notes. I use it with Fuzz knob in its last quarter, and if you try to play too fast with that you can sometimes have this "tracking error" sound, very fun.

I bought this one used, no way to use a battery with it, must be just a soldering problem but I don't mind, i always use Power Supply. The case is rock solid, no problem with that. I don't have backup for my pedals.

Never tried to call them, if it burns I will go to my amp/electronics tech.

I have read very hard reports on this and that's what made me put mine. I've been playing music for 20 years, in band for 10, I play mostly 60s 70s kind of music, from jazzy things to prog rock, some british invasion kind of blues, psychedelics... When I found it I wasn't especially looking for a Fuzz but I really like it. I don't put it by default in my signal chain I want to keep as "pure" as possible, but when I wanna get a big nasty fuzz sound that's it, it has one sound (nothing interesting in the 3 first quarters of the knobs), you won't put it on all your songs. I can get things quite close to Band of Gypsies or Stones' Satisfaction riff sound.
If it was stolen I would definitely buy a Fuzz, this one? I don't know, but at this price I would take it for sure. It's a creative tool.

This thing is easy to use (1 Gain, 1 Volume) but really hard to get usable tones out of...

This pedal is really a matter of taste when it comes to sound quality. It's the noisiest thing you've ever heard. You really need to use it with an amp that has a good amount of EQ control and some good bottom end to get anything out of this at all. I bought it thinking it would sound similar to a Big Muff but smaller. It's not even close. This thing has no low end at all (unlike the BM) and I really thought it was broke when I plugged it in until I heard that all of them sound like this. It's really just good for an effect like the speakers are blown. It also does not put out very much volume which makes it impossible to use live. Also, if you play too many notes or play too fast, it breaks up and sounds like it's broke...pretty funny overall...

Seems built as well as any other Dunlop pedal...

Haven't dealt with them... but I can see where this pedal will make a lot of folks mad if they buy it because they think it will sound like something Hendrix would use, because it's not even close. It sounds more like something like The Dead Kennedy's would use...but you can't use it live...

I've played for 30 years and own a ton of gear. I also own some 60's fuzz pedals. This is not it... As I said, this is really a matter of what your taste in fuzz pedals is. You can't use it live (unless you put some serious noise reduction after it and boost the output a bunch) but as a recording tool, you can get a really ugly fuzz out of it. If you are into really ugly, this is for you. Don't buy it new, but if you see one for under $30, you might want to check it out for a laugh...

Two knobs: One Gain, One Volume, a monkey could figure it out.

I've owned this pedal for about 4 or 5 years and can count the number of times I've used it, so what does that tell 'ya?
I H-A-T-E this pedal. It's too noisy, it isn't true bypass so it screws up your tone even when off. I can't describe it, it just makes me want to through it away.

It's in a big metal box, about the only thing you can break would be the switch.

I've e-mailed Dunlop several times and they always give me really short answers like I'm bothering them.

I love Hendrix, SRV, Eric Clapton, Kenny Wayne Sheppard, Johnny Lang, Chris Duarte, Ian Moore, yadda, yadda... This pedal misses on all accounts!!! If it were stolen I'd be pissed I lost $80 bucks, that's it.

Unfortunately, I bought it like 4-5 years ago because it had the Hendrix name on it so I thought someone must have done their homework enough to get a tone good enough for the Hendrix name. I WAS WRONG. this is just another example of a rip off hidden under the Hendrix name!