Fender Hammertone Fuzz Pedal

Rated 5.00 out of 5

25/9/2022

Okay fuzz pedals are NOT all the same by far! They may as well be different pedals. (The term Fuzz is not generic.) I bought this one due to a YouTube review. Does it sound like it did in a video? No of course not. That all depends on how they record etc. Even an acoustic sound has to come through a mic, which you probably EQ, because you want your playing to sound good. Plus no one is likely to have the same rig as you. After a while you get to hear the pedal's basic effect and can imagine how it will sound with your rig, not that you always get it right. I honed in on the more subtle settings of this pedal, they sounded sweet and controllable in the vid, I wanted to get a sixties feel but not so in your face. This panned out, the pedal on subtle settings moves all your sweet spots around, where it makes some progressions sound great, when dry they are just so, so. Indeed, via the new sweet spots, it takes you in new directions, but yes subtle. This on both my clean and driven channels, placed in front of the amp not in the effects loop, it's great on both channels, but obviously a different result. Turn it up and you get big Fuzz, I don't have a use for that personally and or the octave? I'd rather use my amp's drive which I love, and colour it subtly. It's VERY well made; the tone is indeed tone not just more of the same. Input, output and power on the top, as it should be!!!! This so you can put the pedals closer. Easy to match the volume to the dry signal. And it's cheap! I'm very happy it did what I wanted.. The other fuzz that caught my attention was in the new Gibson affordable range. The modern feel setting is pretty cool! For context, the other fuzzes I tried were Boss via the ME 80 pedal board, which I couldn't find a use for, and a cheap one, can't remember the name but it was rubbish. As ever it's a journey! No quick fix.

Steve Berg