Cream Fluff Fuzz
The Fuzzdog Cream Fluff Fuzz pedal. Our best understanding is that this is a workalike of the Frantone Cream Puff Fuzz. We ended picking up the PCB for this pedal - not necessarily because we weren't open to the possibility of buying a Frantone pedal (we were - we don't support complete clones except in a few cases), but because we were under the impression in 2016, when we originally bought it, that Frantone wasn't going to be making it (or any other pedal) any more. It had fallen off of Frantone's production line, didn't have a webpage for ordering, and the Frantone website looked like it was possibly, even likely, ending production of all pedals. So we bought the Cream Fluff Fuzz PCB from Fuzzdog. When shipping is expensive, let alone shipping from abroad, we're only going to buy the bare minimum.
Anyway, we got this - as should go without saying - because in our opinion this is really a fantastic sounding pedal. When the controls are set just so, the pedal can sound like a beautiful, harmonically rich, thick fuzz. It's perhaps not unlike a low-RPM / high torque buzzsaw with a blade that's just-a-little-bit-less-than-super-sharp, ripping through a stack of 2x4s with reckless abandon. It can also be set so it sounds like a 1960s fuzzed-out guitar coming through a crappy old transistor radio with a cheap 2-inch speaker, set to an AM radio station.
- Thermionic Studios has one(1) Cream Fluff Fuzz. When we finish assembling it, it will be available for rental.
Controls
- Knob 1 - "Fuzz": Turning the knob clockwise increases the amount of fuzz present in the signal.
- Knob 2 - "Tone": Turning the knob clockwise increases the volume of the treble frequencies in the signal.
- Knob 3 - "Volume": Turn clockwise to increase the the output volume of the pedal.
- Footswitch 1 - "On/Off": This footswitch toggles between "Active" and "Bypass".
The Cream Fluff Fuzz is sort of a different beast than other Fuzz tone pedals. If the pedal is engaged with the fuzz turned all the way down, there will be less fuzz, yes, but the treble will also be lower. As the fuzz control gets turned up, more higher-level harmonics get added to the signal, thereby increasing the treble response. So this pedal architecture makes the tone control very interactive with the fuzz control. Of course, this can also be observed from time to time with amplifiers and other pedals, but this degree of tone change and control interactivity isn't something we've seen with other pedals.
Bypass: True
Like most pedals assembled from only PCBs, the Fuzzdog Cream Fluff Fuzz is True Bypass.
General Information
When you really have time to get into exploring the sonic possibilities, one of the things we find really remarkable is the "girth" of the distortion even with single-coil pickups.
Pedal Manual
We are unaware of any kind of Pedal Manual for this pedal.
Frantone offers no Owner's Manual for this pedal.
Fuzzdog offers a Build Manual, but not an Owner's Manual. Outside of these authorities, we believe that this wiki entry is likely the closest an individual can get to a Pedal Manual.
Phase Inversion: No
This pedal does not invert phase.
| Schematic ID | Electronic Part | Action | Phase State |
|---|---|---|---|
| IC1a | JRC 4558 | Inverting | Inverted |
| IC1b | JRC 4558 | Inverting | Reverted/Original |
Schematic
Artists
We are currently unaware of any artists actively using the pedal now, or who have in the past.
- Additional Sources
