Z.Vex Fat Fuzz Factory Vexter

I can barely express the love I have for the Fuzz Factory. I used to be a bit more of a noisemonger, playing a lot of experimental jazz and incorporating more extreme areas of metal and sound exploration, and had an old Myrold hand-painted FF. I went travelling for some years and all my gear was sold, but selling that pedal was kind of like cutting off an arm. There is just nothing like it... nice fuzz settings may be difficult to find for people who want to sound like their favourite rock star, but still they are there. However, the real beauty in this one is the insane static tones and electric velcro, the self-oscilating abrasion; It doesn't sound like much fun when describing like that but these things are really like orgasmic sound stimulation. At one festival gig I somehow almost lost signal from my guitar but managed to play about a 20-30 minute encore using just my FF and aa delay with expression pedal, using the knobs on the FF to modulate frequency and the delay expression to warp it all into alien soundscapes..

After five years of silence I bought a guitar again, and nearly didn't buy this thing but then I felt the call. It does everything I loved but adds the ability for some nice, thick fuzzes with which the more sensitive user will probably find more comfort after the terror of the original sounds make you ponder what the hell you have just subjected yourself to.
I have too much love for this thing, it MUST be first in your chain for maximum dynamic response (play with your guitar's volume a little and see how much the qualities change) and I'm loving it going into my Wonderlove filter, and even more doubled into my Plasma with the blend of the latter up around half way.

Buying again I was happy to see the Fatty, which expands sonic capabilities even further!

Not an obvious fan of fuzz pedals, but I fell in love with the Fuzz Factory ever since I heard it for the first time some ten years ago. Been using it for almost a year now. It surely is a pedal I engage just on certain parts, but it is a very important pedal on my board.

For anyone that loves to tweak stuff and feels quite comfortable in that way of hanlding the instruments this pedal is great. It's very easy actually to get to know the pedal even if it seems "unpredictable" on every setting. I got used to it right away so I know when and why I'm changing the settings. For someone unfamilliar with that approach it can probably be a hit or miss with the settings.

I always wanted to buy the original version but changed my mind at the last minute because of the three modes that this one offers. It was a great decision because I can now have both the classic and a more fat and dirty fuzz.

However, this pedal does not like when the wah pedal is in front of it and it cannot squeal or be as noisey as it should when using it in that order. It still can sound good but it's more "tamed" and you loose the main character of the pedal and you also lose the pitch effect while turning the pots.

Appart from that, I'm very satisfied with this pedal! Anyone who likes to experiment a bit or who would like to achieve that dirty and noisey tone.. this is the one.

I bought this effect for experimenting with double-bass. Played few gigs with jazz/electronica/rock inspired music and it opened completely new sound territory. In a nutshell: Fat Fuzz Factory rocks, screams, kicks in the face. Very loud and dirty it begs to be a tool of punishment. Definitely this is not touch-responsive addition to the sound, rather heavy-oriented (but still inspiring), very present and suggestive instrument.

Pros: character, organic harshness and dirt, solid construction, small dimension, big knobs, nice design
Cons: not for everyone

It's a tweaker's paradise, if you like to turn knobs more than to actually play it's great. All knobs affect all other knobs, so it's hard to know what you're doing, even harder to "recall" settings. You can get many interesting sounds, but I find that most of those have constant feedback and noise as soon as you stop playing.
You have to use gate to get rid of the feedback, but then it doesn't sound so good and it chops your sound a bit like noise gate would.
It is also hard to use live in a band, because most settings don't cut through.
I would recommend this only to someone to use at home to have fun or perhaps in studio where you can tweak until you get it right.
I only took it to gig twice and eventually replaced it with Octafuzz.