Photo: @mydeargear
Like classic fuzz pedals, this one sounds great. Unlike them, it’s easy to control and can play nicely in any setup!
Like many guitar players, I have always had a bit of a love/hate relationship with fuzz pedals. The right pedal, set up in the right way, into the right amp, and with the rest of the signal chain being just right, too, can be about as much fun as you can have with an electric guitar. But too often, one little factor being amiss can derail the whole experience. Fuzz pedals are finicky. They often require a non‑standard power supply, they usually need a direct connection to the guitar, they are affected by temperature, and invite you to tweak their bias until they sound broken. They are almost always affected by the next pedal they feed into and, finally, that golden‑tone lead voicing that you dialled in on your own will often completely disappear in an on‑stage live mix.
Many guitarists of a certain age will have started out using fuzz pedals because that’s all there was, but then moved swiftly on to ‘something better’ with the arrival of pedals like the MXR Distortion+ and the soft‑clipping overdrives, such as the Tube Screamer and its many derivatives. Yet, with everything that was gained in attaining a more amp‑like distortion, something special was lost, too, I feel. Something rich and organic in the sound.
The Focus Fuzz pedal was almost the opposite of most fuzz pedals, in that all of its control settings were musically useful!
Focus On Fuzz
I could never really make a fuzz work well on stage, but then in March 2023 along came UK‑based boutique pedal maker Great Eastern FX’s Focus Fuzz pedal: an original circuit design that encompassed the range of classic fuzz voicings, but with none of the drawbacks of most fuzz pedal designs. Using a mixture of a rare MP38A Soviet‑era germanium transistor and two silicon BC107B transistors, the Focus Fuzz pedal was almost the opposite of most fuzz pedals, in that all of its control settings were musically useful!
From a line‑up of just Fuzz, Level and Focus controls you could summon up anything from a mild clipping overdrive, with plenty of volume on tap, to full‑on thrash, square‑wave mayhem. It didn’t seem to care what came before or after it, and didn’t require a direct connection to the guitar to work at its best. Depending on the actual settings used, it cleaned up very nicely, albeit very differently from a classic Fuzz Face, as you backed off the guitar volume.
The very limited number of MP38A transistors available, however, meant that although I actually tested and reviewed the pedal for Sound On Sound, the entire limited edition run of 250 had sold out before we managed to publish it! Great Eastern FX subsequently issued an all silicon‑transistor version of the pedal that was also well received, but now the designer has managed to obtain another batch of the rare Soviet germanium component, so the original Focus Fuzz is back — but this time with some extra bits — in the form of Focus Fuzz Deluxe.
As in the original design, the Fuzz control increases gain and also simultaneously lowers the bias voltage in the main clipping stage, which allows for a lot of variation in the fundamental distortion characteristics of the circuit. It certainly doesn’t need to be maxed out to sound good! Added to this is the action of the Focus control, which puts a frequency selective boost at the front end of the circuit, with a rising centre frequency as you turn it up, whilst always retaining enough solid midrange to be fully ‘present’ in any mix.
More Options
But now there are three more sounds available from this version of the Focus Fuzz. Pre‑selectable as an alternative to the Fuzz circuit, Boost and Drive are fixed gain settings that activate different output stages, optimised for their particular gain range. Both are usefully sensitive to input level, with Boost mode designed to just break up a little when you dig in, whilst Drive mode does much the same only ‘a little more’. The Fuzz control is inactive in these modes, while the Focus control works to fine‑tune the amount of gain and attack. Both modes work well — well enough to have me wondering if one of them shouldn’t have been made selectable as an alternative bypass mode, to use it as an ‘always‑on’ effect to liven‑up a clean amp.
What more could you want? Well how about an updated version of the classic ’60s Octave Fuzz effect? The Focus Fuzz Deluxe’s Overtone mode, which, unlike Boost and Drive, is independently footswitchable, has no controls, but combines a transistor‑based octave effect with some of the Fuzz, Boost or Drive signal. This helps to make the overall effect more musically useful, to my ears. If that’s something you think you’ll never use, I wouldn’t worry — the original Focus Fuzz circuit alone is worth the price of entry, and this version costs very little more than the original.
The input and output jacks are on the top edge of the pedal, along with the usual 9V centre-negative power inlet.Photo: @mydeargear
...the Focus Fuzz was, “the fuzz pedal that does what I’ve really always wanted a fuzz to do”...
Great Eastern FX pedals always have a classy look, and this one is no exception. Housed in a heavy‑duty folded‑steel enclosure, with true‑bypass footswitch, top‑mounted jacks and 9VDC input (no battery option), and with a striking, gold‑hammertone paint finish, the Focus Fuzz Deluxe has an aesthetic appeal to match its sonic palette. There’s still only a limited number of the MP38A components available at present, so once again this is a limited edition of just 400 units. In my original review, I said that the Focus Fuzz was, “the fuzz pedal that does what I’ve really always wanted a fuzz to do” and it’s great to know that a few more people will now get to experience that and judge for themselves.
Hocus Pocus Audio Example
Yes, I know Jan Ackerman used a Colorsound Power Boost pedal, set mainly as a treble booster, into a solid-state Fender amp on this track… but who could resist doing a Focus Fuzz example with a tribute to ‘Hocus Pocus’ by Focus?! This is the Focus Fuzz Deluxe into a Marshall and UA OX 4x12… and yet, not miles away I’d contend.
The Colorsound Power Boost was a simple transistor-based preamp that would go into fuzz-like clipping if you turned up the gain enough. The Focus Fuzz Deluxe is positively nuanced in comparison, evidenced in this example by the fact that the riff and the solo are done with the same setting: Fuzz 40%; Focus 40%; Level just above unity. Digging in harder for the solo section gives a bit more edge and bite, while the riff sits back a bit with a lighter touch: not normally something you can do very successfully with a fuzz.
The octave-effect section is an overdub so I could use different settings for something more extreme.
Jan Ackerman’s solos on the full-length version of ‘Hocus Pocus’ are all brilliantly bonkers and I can’t really get anywhere near that, but he was a big influence on my playing in the early years. At a time when most guitar players were still very much ‘blues-based’, Ackerman could be both beautifully melodic and also uniquely ‘outside’. I had the pleasure of meeting him backstage just a few years ago and watching him play. He still had that special ‘something’ in his playing.
Summary
This classy analogue pedal offers classic fuzz effects and more, but without the drawbacks of traditional fuzz pedals.