Teaching Machines FuzzBillion

Much more than just a fuzz pedal, this unique distortion device offers literally billions of possibilities...

There used to be a much clearer dividing line between guitar pedals and studio gear. Today, though, more and more designers are essentially housing fully‑fledged studio‑quality hardware in a sturdy case, often with both instrument and line‑level connectivity, and popping a footswitch or two on the front. It’s a far cry from the little board‑friendly boxes made ubiquitous by the likes of Boss and MXR!

The FuzzBillion, by Wales‑based two‑man company Teaching Machines, is a case in point. Yes, it has a footswitch and sort of looks like a guitar pedal. But the manual makes clear that it was not conceived purely as a toy for guitarists: “The FuzzBillion is a distortion device for guitar, bass and synthesizers. It can be used with guitar or line‑level signals. The numerical switches provide the ability to shape the distortion in ways far beyond conventional distortion devices.”

Overview

We’re told that the FuzzBillion was conceived “whilst Frank [Naughton, Teaching Machines’ co‑owner] was playing with various different distortion circuits and wanted a quick way to swap between them”. I can believe it. In addition to the footswitch there are 11 numerical switches, whose single‑digit setting is scrolled up/down using its pair of buttons, plus a gain knob. And on both side panels there’s a jack socket, one for the input, one for the output, each accompanied by a button to swtich between high‑impedance instrument and transformer‑balanced line‑level operation.

Both the input and the output of the FuzzBillion can be set for use with instrument‑ or line‑level gear.The switches relate to various diodes and amplifiers (germanium, silicon, LED, etc), and each of those makes its own contribution to the overall distortion sound. As Teaching Machines put it modestly, this gives you access to a “very wide range of tones” — with 10 variations (0 to 9) on each of 11 switches, the total number of possible circuit variations is literally in the billions: 100,000,000,000 to be precise! And that’s before you bring the gain knob into play...

Ostensibly, from left to right these 11 switches set (deep breath...): a gain boost; three clipping amplifiers; a tone control; two octave fuzz parameters; a PLL, or ‘phase‑locked loop’ that behaves a little like a pitch‑tracking oscillator; a bias offset, which essentially moves the input signal’s zero point up or down to cause wave clipping; an...