Ok, first things first, my love affair with Fuzzrocious pedals. I have been drooling over Fuzzrocious pedals ever since I first joined talkbass.com back in 2008 or so. Fuzzrocious pedals are hand made by Ryan and are hand painted by his wife, Shannon. Originally, Ryan made clones of pedals from General Guitar Gadgets (link) and came up with sweet new names for them (i.e. Green Stache, TS El Oso, Munch The Muffin, and many more). Alas, they went on hiatus (seemingly for an indefinite amount of time) to focus on family and school. Fortunately for the rest of us, Fuzzrocious came back online a few months ago and have started cranking out ridiculously good original designs (no more clones!). So without further ado, the Dark Driving from Fuzzrocious pedals.
Direct from Fuzzrocious:
"DARK DRIVING is a dark, low gain overdrive based upon the BJFE Blue Berry Bass OD and Honey Bee OD. The trimmers are set at stock for the most amount of bass repsonse and gain. There is NO low end or mids loss with this pedal! There is a treble roll off, creating a "dark overdrive." You can tweak the internal trimmers to taste, close the box back up, and go about your business. The only knob you have to worry about is the external volume knob! Perfect for an "always on" OD!
- True bypass
- "Boss"-style power
- Hand-painted (black SPARKLE enclosure w/ different color planet and ring on each pedal)
- Built to order just for YOU
- External volume; internal trimmers - SET AND FORGET!
- Bright violet LED"
CONSTRUCTION:
Everything I'd hoped it be. High quality components, clean soldering points. The top mounted jacks are a blessing for super jammed pedal boards (like mine). The switch is super sturdy and the volume knob is secure. When my Dark Driving arrived in the mail from Fuzzrocious, although it was superbly packed (Ryan is well known for his packing and shipping abilities), the Violet LED had popped out of it's socket. Easy enough fix, it popped right back into place. Surely not a built flaw.
GRAPHICS:
Shannon's designs are awesome! Well painted, and whimsical. Honestly it's one of the things that brings the most character to Fuzzrocious and it is what really brought them to my attention in the first place (apart from the killer sound clips). Each Planet and ring on each Dark Driving that goes out is different so no two are alike!
TONE:
Dark. Haha, that goes without saying, I guess, but there it is. This pedals brings the beef. There is plenty of volume on tap so you can get heavy enough to kill small children at twelve feet (not that we condone that here at MotherTone). The two internal trim pots will go from virtually no low end and no gain, to doom. I liked keeping the trim settings on the "factory" default: maxed.
Overall, the tone of this pedal is immense. Gobs of low end that refuses to get lost in the mix and with the hybrid setup (tube preamp, solid state power amp) that I had when this pedal was mine, added a thick tube-y growl. I really wish that I still had this pedal, as I recently acquired an SVT-2-PRO (all tube) amp in a game of chance. I think that they would pair really well together, with this pedal's ability to drive the power tubes into super sweet distortion. At the time, however, this pedal was just a little too dark for my tastes. I'm generally more into the snarling RAT type of distortion that has more bite and a little bit less "wooly-ness" to it. Your mileage may vary.
What I really liked about this pedal, and that it is something that I honestly didn't fully explore when I had it, was your ability to clean up this overdrive with your bass' volume knob and/or a volume pedal. My main bass (an Ibanez SR506) has two volume knobs so I don't use this option as much as I should.
CUSTOMER SERVICE:
Some of the best in the business. You'd be hard pressed to find another builder that will take better care of you than Ryan at Fuzzrocious. Only from boutique builders, and never from a conglomerates like Boss or Electro-Harmonix.
Please go check out Ryan at Fuzzrocious. Clips and Ordering information is on their website:
More to come.
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