Univox Super Fuzz

I had one of these back in '73, it broke and some how through my "idiocy" I lost track of it. I do not remember any octave thing going on with this but this distortion pedal, sound wise, gets a 100% rating from me. I later went to a Systech Overdrive, an MXR Distortion + and a Nady Tube Distortion (this one I stuck with and use the MXR only as a backup. This orange pedal w/the blue pad is like the holy grail of distortion if my memory is intact. It wasn't a chord pedal though, I think two notes was usually the max that you would want to play. So it's a lead pedal. Not a minor 11th or 7th suspended 4th dream pedal. This was a hit one note and get chills up and down your spine pedal. I'm still looking to get one again and hopefully someday that'll happen but until then I'll have to just remember.

easy enough...takes 10 seconds playing with it to realize what each pot does...

OK...I have home made superfuzz but It sounds wery mudhoney superfuzz so I suppose It's correct scheme...

this fuzz is EXTREME!!!...don't expect regular fuzz from this...you must check it out before buying because it's not regular fuzz...

It has some strange effect similar to drone effect, or even ring modulator...so it adds extra tones to original tone and then distortes it so you get extreme sound...that strange effect is shoved good on Sonic Youth's cover of simpson's theme (go on Kazaa and get it)...that is the sound of superfuzz with gain set to low...and smashing pumpkins or mudhoney(touch me I'm sick) is sound of superfuzz with gain set to high...if you listen to these you'll get the picture...you can't get clean, little distorted sound!!!

so if you get superfuzz with right picture of it before you buy it you MUST give it 10

don't know...home made

greath for alternative/punk/noise
a must have noise pedal!!!
also great on bass

typical fuzz pedal layout with the addition of the tone switch. All guitars sound pretty much the same through it ( always set your amp to clean, or the overtones get lost).

HUGE FOAMY SOFT NASTY HEAVEN!! Nothing comes close! i get involuntary giggles every time i play it...Octave is very prominent, and almost has a ring modulator quality to it ( but softer, and more organic). Both settings sound equally good, yet totally different; setting 1 has more mids with avery prominent octave up. setting 2 scoops the mids which let the octave and the overtones play with each other in a most entertaining way. this setting is just awesome!! One low note sounds like a whole band turned up all the way! there are both high and low octaves in this setting making anything soud HUGE.

built very cheaply in the early seventies,the switch somtimes cuts out, the jacks occasionally get noisey,as do the knobs, but so what...

as if...BUT, there are many people hip to this pedal that can repair it.

I JUST CANT GET OVER HOW MUCH THIS ROCKS!!!these are very hard to find at an affordable price, but nothing can touch it (and believe me, ive heard them all).This circuit was made under dozens of names so be on the lookout...same circuit as ibanez standard fuzz, roland bee baa, ace tone fuzz master and many others (all made by shin-ei).For bass or guitar it just rocks!!(I wish the two position slide switch for the tone was a foot switch, like on the ace tone, but...)

Very easy to use. Two knobs- blend and expander- and a two position switch. This is an older gray box with a blue logo.

This is without a doubt the nastiest, best sounding fuzz I have ever had the pleasure of trying. I actually like it more than I like my Big Muff Pi, and that's saying alot. It's slightly noisy, but no more than most fuzzboxes.
My guitars are a Gibson Firebird V, a Gibson Flying V, and an Ibanez Destroyer. The amp is a Peavey VTM-60 head into an Orange 4x12 with four 75 watt Celestions. The other boxes on my pedalboard are a US Big Muff Pi, a DOD FX25B Envelope Filter, a Scholz Distortion Generator, an Ibanez Classic Flange, a Fulltone Deja Vibe 2, and an E/H Deluxe Memory Man.

I only have one. If I saw another one around here I would pick it up.

N/A

I play psychedelic and prog rock and also work in a blues/rock band. The Super-Fuzz sounds like GOD. I have been playing 27 years. Other boxes I own include an Ibanez TS-9 (original), a Danelectro compressor and overdrive, and TWO Electro Harmonix LPB-1 Linear Power Boosters. If stolen I would hunt you down and disembowel you with no sweat.

simple...I love the "impossible-to-miss" rubber footswitch pad.

I've only tried it with my Les Paul and Strat but it sounds great with both. I play though an old Univox Blue B-Group 115watt head (plexi copy) with a 2X12" cab containing '65 Jensen speakers.

It is noisy (as it should be) but there is an unusual fading-out of the noise when I stop playing (similar to a noise gate).

The tone of this pedal is incredible...warm and musical. I had a Fulltone '69 and sold it since it gave an odd fluttery sound and unmusical fuzz. My Fulltone Soul-Bender sounds VERY similar to the Superfuzz but the Superfuzz has more high frequency fuzz and less middle than the Soul-Bender. It reminds me a lot of the tone on Hendrix' "Come On (Let the good time roll)" or The Rolling Stones' "Satisfaction". I love the internal trim pot on the circuit board. This allows one to max out the fuzz level or tame it down quite a bit so you can fine tune with the "Expander" knob.

Everyone who enjoys a good fuzz once in a while should own this pedal.

it's 30 years old and still works like new...

N/A

I have no grievances other than it could be a bit smaller. this pedal is huge and has a lot of empty space in the housing. Oh well, at least it's built like a tank and sounds really terrific.

Its an easy pedal, everything explains itself.

I play an unmodded Squier strat>superfuzz>CH-1>gorilla tc115 150 Watt combo. Im not sure about the chorus/fuzz thingy coz i jut have the superfuzz.
It isnt that noisy. But nnoise is cool, so...
It ounds cool, vut it has too much gain. When u set the gain to 80% its way too much, but it gives a cool sound. So yes, it rocks.
I like Nirvana, Sonic Youth, Placebo, Hole, Muse, Jimi Hendrix and some more.

I like both the norma and notch setting, but the notch setting ddoesnt have mids, and i love them so I have to tweak my Eq with it. And the normal mode isnt as aggressive as the notch mode. But it sounds cool though.

It also gives really really cool feedback and sustain!!!

U shoud check out mudhoney music if you want to knwo waht this pedal sounds like. My rig sounds really like mudhoney, i think its the cobination of superfuzz+single coils.

Its home build so.... My dad build it in a EH electric misstress box. Its quite reliable I think :)

My dad made this superfuzz from the unofficial mudhoney schematic ont he internet. www.unofficial-mudhoney.com And it rocks, it just has too much gain, but thats cool. The whole pedal rocks.

Ive been playing classical guitar for 6 years, but I started doing chords last year and I paly a half year electric, but Im not that bad.

If it were stolen or anything. Id certainly make my dad build me another one.

I love the huge gain, feedback and sustain it gives u!!! The feedback just 0wnz!

I played thorugh lots of DS, OD and FZ pedals, and this one easily wins.

I wish it had more bass in the normal mode, but its alright.

It heklps me making music. The superfuzz gives you a really nice and koel sustain and when u cranck the gain pot it just sounds weird and over-gained. Its cool.

Uhm, build one as soon as possible.

I play through hollowbody guitars predominantly, through a Fender Bassman amp. My Super-Fuzz is one of the early ones (late 60's-early 70's)with the grey sheet metal case and blue logo. The pedal is quite easy to use. One on/off footswitch, one volume knob, one expander (gain), and one two-way tone switch. As you know from the previous reviews, the tone switch allows you to choose between a position 1's midrangey fuzz and position 2's boosted bass & treble/scooped mid fuzz. Position 2 is not my bag but more about that later. The footswitch decided to go out on me the day after I got it, so I sent it to Jeff Doucette at SustainPunch to get it repaired. More about that later also.

It sounded "Super" as soon as I plugged it in. It was pretty hissy and noisy, but no more so than most fuzzes. It did have a problem with resonant squeal when I cranked the gain all the way up, but it sounded so good I didn't care. There was also the aforementioned footswitch problem, so SustainPunch said they would fix it and give it a good once-over. I had them put in a new footswitch and upgrade it to true bypass although it really sounded fine in bypass mode, but it was only 15 bucks extra so I figured why not? They also replaced a noisy transistor with a direct replacement. When I got the pedal it sounded exactly the same but not nearly as noisy, and the squeal was gone (probably the bad transistor). Also, the gain control was more gradual. Before it wouldn't even come one until I had turned the gain up halfway. Now it has a more gradual increase in gain throughout the control's travel. How does it sound? One word: MEAN. It sounds mean, agressive, but not uncontrollably over-the-top, if that makes sense. I only use position one really, the midrangey sound. If you've ever heard the Cramps' "Rockinnreelininaucklandnewzealand" or "A Date With Elvis", it has that kind of sound, an aggressive, buzzsaw kind of sound. Not refined at all. Sounds great for Stooges type stuff also, or Oblivians-style garage-punk. I'd go so far to say that it's versatile, because you can turn the gain down low enough that it's just barely distorting and hit the guitar hard to get that broken-speaker square wave explosion. Or crank the gain up and pretend you're playing a Husqvarna. Sounds great for barre chords, it loves the open-E chord, but it does NOT like minor chords. The Super-Fuzz puts out such odd harmonics that a minor interval makes it go crazy. This can be used to good effect sometimes though. Oddly enough, it handles minor chords better when the gain is all the way up. If I needed to combine combine fuzz with discernible minor chords I would use my Prescription Electronics Yardbox, which handles chords extremely well, it just doesn't sound as nasty as the Super-Fuzz. I do not care for the Position 2 scooped mid sound. I like Black Sabbath and the Misfits, but I'm not after that sound at all--perhaps that's because of my amp, which leans toward the bassy end of the spectrum, but the scooped-mid death fuzz isn't pleasing to me. I like the fuzz trashy and garage-y and rock 'n' roll-y, and position 1 does that very well.

I had the problem with the footswitch, but we're talking about a 30-year-old pedal here, so problems like this are to be expected. Now that it's been repaired and upgraded, I expect it will last another 30 years. I'd gig without a direct backup, although I have other fuzzes I could use to get by.

Univox is history, and I doubt Korg would touch this thing with a ten foot pole. There are plenty of places that repair these things and supply schematics.

I play garage/punk/rockabilly/surf/blues stuff. The Super-Fuzz is particularly useful for the garage/punk part of that equation. If anything happened to it, I would try to find another one, maybe one of the later ones with the colorful die-cast frame and big rubber footswitch, but I like the simplicity and the layout of the knobs better on the early model like mine.

It's pretty easy to use and versatile. You have 2 knobs, balance (volume), expander (amount of fuzz/gain) and a little tone switch to switch between settings 1 and 2. Setting 1 kinda sounds like the crappy distortion you get from cheap fender practice amps (only ever owned fender amps) and setting 2 has a boosted scooped midrange sound to it. Mine is used so it didn't come with a manual. If you open up the back up you'll also find the internal trim pot inside, it's a metalish looking knob you can turn and adjust the way the super fuzz behaves.

I use a Fender strat with 2 single coil pickups and a single humbucker through a fender champ. It's a great sounding pedal but with mine, if turn the expander all the way up and play at low volumes, when you play a chord the sound comes out soft and gets louder...it's really irritating. Anyone had this problem before? Well who plays fostly anway!?!? Honestly the best fuzz pedal in the world!!!

It's kind of an old pedal so I don't know if it's that reliable. So far so good, but I'm not going to do something stupid. The frame is pretty sturdy, die cast I think. It died on me once before but it's never happend again thanks to a few engineering skills.

Company went under a while back. I think it was bought out by Korg?? Look around the internet or go to these sights, they can repair em dirt cheap:
http://www.analogman.com/ http://www.smashing-pumpkins.org/sustainpunch/index.html

I play mostly punk/grunge stuff, like Nirvana and Mudhoney. I'd say this pedal is a great mix with my playing style because I get the sounds I like and the bands I like use one too or use a lot of fuzz/distortion. I love everything about this pedal except for the price...these things can get real expensive. Of course it is a vintage pedal so vintage=$$$, so why not build one. I'd recommend this pedal to anyone!!! Listen to the intro for the song "Touch me I'm sick" by Mudhoney, this is basically the sound setting 2 will give you.

Agree with all of the above, but none have mentioned the internal trim-pot. If you open the Superfuzz you will find a trim-pot on the lower middle of the print. Its brownish with a metal thingy to turn. If you experiment with this pot you can customize your Superfuzz sound. Middle position has an unbelievable amount of octave. Turn it right, and you loose much of the hissing-noise. Turn it left and you will saturate the fuzz even more. Just fool around with it and dont worry about loosing your favourite settings. You cant get lost in there.

Two knobs and a switch. My unit had no labels on the controls so I figured them out back in 1980. Gain,Fuzz Level,and a flat tone or a sweet ass midrange scoop for the switch. This unit is a no brainer control wise. you don't need a fuckin' manual for this one.

The TITS! I play bass and every guitar player that hears it just about busts a nut over its sound. I play it through whatever bass amp is in the vicinity. I wasn't going for any particular artists sound when I stumbled across this mother 18 years ago, other than I found out I could play the intro to MONTROSE song "Rock The Nation" better than our current gitarist at the time. This has got to be one of the best,if not the most wicked distortion sound on the electric bass. So you guitar players better grab these while you can, before us bass players snatch em all up and give you fools a run for your money.

Hell yes, I've drug this little bastard all around the world and back in the last 18 years. Only a little puss would worry about reliability. My unit is a good size grey die cast enclosure with a huge pedal. The light grey rubber cover on the pedal spells SUPER-FUZZ on it. The only problem I have had with it is that the DPDT footswitch went out on it this year, but Analog Mike fixed me up with another one when I bought a couple of MuTron pedals off of him. Not a bad record for 18+ years ehh? I've been using this unit without a backup for almost 19 years, and I got it used in 1980.

Other than RG Keene and the internet I didn't have any support. Luckily I am an electronics technician, so I can now repair it myself, due mainly to all the postings of the schematic I've found on the www. Even if you are not electronically inclined I know for a fact that Radio Shack sells the 2N2222A transistors this monster uses dirt cheap, also they sell the 1N914 diodes that are at the heart of the square wave production of this device. So buying most of the parts required for repair at R/S could save you some money if you should ever need service on your unit.

My Super Fuzz was given to me by an employer when I was working in a music store in my late teens. All because I was the only person to touch it in 5 years. The owner just wanted the display space to put another Morley pedal on display. Are these pedals worth the money being asked for them today? That is truly a subjective thing. I myself believe there is no finer sounding FUZZ pedal available. You have to realize that this unit has its own distinct sound and absolutely rocks. It may not be for everybody, but you bass players better take note. This is the crunchiest, it also seems to have a "compression" effect built in, nastiest distorted bass solo voice around. That is with the mid-soop engaged, otherwise it sounds like your bass being played through any old distortion pedal readily available today. Bottom line for me is that this is the most killer FUZZ to be used with the bass. And yes I would pay the current asking price for one of these if I could not revive mine.