Guitar Player, November 1999
Buzz, Boost, and Burn
The popularity of other effects may come and go, but distortion boxes will always be the top choice for most guitarists. The eight pedals in this roundup range from mild chunkers to fuzzed-out fireballs. To suss out their distorted glories, each pedal was plugged into a Vox AC30, a Fender Deluxe Reverb, a Matchless Chieftain combo, and a 50-watt, mid-'70s Marshall head and 4x12 cabinet. Test guitars included a Fender American Standard Strat, a Fender reissue Tele Custom, and a Gibson Les Paul.
Voodoo Lab Superfuzz
If pure sonic havoc is your thing, the Superfuzz ($149) is a must. This device sports an aluminum enclosure, PC-board construction, true-bypass switching (with an LED status indicator), and a DC power jack. The controls are volume, resonance, tone, and attack.
The Superfuzz is all about trashy, unrefined buzz. The pedal's resonance control is a subharmonic booster that does a great job of keeping the Superfuzz's buzz intact, while making a little combo amp sound like it's pumping a big cabinet. Yeah! The tone control delivers a wide spectrum of midrange and bass timbres, but even in its meatier modes, the pedal never loses its great fuzz splat. The Superfuzz flaunts tons of output and reacts very well to picking dynamics - you can elicit many different distortion textures by simply adjusting your guitar's volume control. This pedal is an exceptional choice for hardcore fuzz heads.