ZVex

Fat Sound Guitars picked up Z Vex effects in the late 90's because it was so refreshing to find a pedal builder that was doing more than simply building improved, reissue pedals. Improved reissue pedals are a vital part of the music retail industry today and important for guitarists to have access to, but we loved the fact that Z Vex reminded us of the days when you might walk into a music store and see a wah pedal or a fuzz face and have no preconceived notions of what you were supposed to do with it. As a result you got together with your band, hooked up your new alien device and created rather than duplicated!

With the improved reissues, often times players simply fall back on the works of others, becomig guitarist equivilants of Xerox machines, while fogotting to be artists and to come up with something new....that perhaps moves the game forward.

Zachary Vex invents pedals that you have to figure out what to do with and that leads to an awakening of the creative side of your mind which leads, hopefully to inspired pieces of music.

The Iventobox may be Zachary's best example of this yet. It not only gives you sonic goodness built-in that allows you to create right out of the box, it allows you to create your own pedals, share your designs with others in an open source manner and become part of the Z. Vex process. It's a totally insane and completely ingenious idea.

It reminds us of the open source methodology behind the iPhone apps making Zachary Vex the Steve Jobs of the guitar effect pedal world!

Zachary is a compete nut and we love him!

The Inventobox Pedal Kit

This is the ultimate tool for diehard pedal fantatics, a completely modular, open-source version of the famed Z. Vex tone circuits, allowing infinite customization and re-invention of the infamous squealing tones of the Fuzz Factory and other infamous Z. Vex effect pedals.  

The double-wide Inventobox has 16 knobs that can be assigned to any number of duties, based on what’s under the hood.  And what’s under the hood is up to you; for the full $399, you can get an Inventobox with 3 modules already installed, encompassing the Fuzz Factory, Super Hard On, and a Marshall-style tone stack.  A unit without the 3 pre-installed modules will be $299, encouraging the geeks to get busy designing their own sounds from the get-go.  The second half of the box flips up and locks onto the front box to allow for tinkering with the modules.

Eventually Zachary says he plans to publish all the tone circuits of his pedals on the internet, and create a community of Inventobox programmers who could even potentially get their tone circuits “published” as purchasable modules directly from Z. Vex. 

The pedal even has a built-in work light inside!

Our kits, at $399.00, come with the Fuzz factory, Super Hard On and the Marshall-style tone stack already built in along with the complete wiring kit that allows you to open the pedal and design the next great Z Vex effect.

What a concept!

Fat Sound's Take

Based on an extensive shootout of the 10 Boost style units that we stock:
Most uncompressed boost available. Also, by far the brightest. Not recommended for black/silverface Fender-style amps, but despite its
brighter quality works beautifully with Vox style amps. Best of pack for use before a distortion or OD pedal to "excite" the pedal so to speak. 

The "Crackle Okay" volume knob is a negative-feedback control styled after classic 60's recording console inputs. (They crackled when adjusted too.)

It's so transparent no one will be able to tell you're using a pedal.

Perfect for making the most of a classic amp and guitar, because it simply makes your guitar bigger and pushes the amp harder, causing natural overload.

This sound can be the solution to the 'disappearing guitar' effect you get sometimes on stage when you stomp on your distortion and sound weaker. When cranked, it sounds much louder than a fuzz or distortion under stage conditions. 

A Fat Sound Guitars™ best seller for over 10 years.

Mike Gallo has always wanted to be a hand model so I finally gave him his shot!

Fat Sound's Take

Based on an extensive shootout of the 10 Boost style units that we stock:
Most uncompressed boost available. Also, by far the brightest. Not recommended for black/silverface Fender-style amps, but despite its
brighter quality works beautifully with Vox style amps. Best of pack for use before a distortion or OD pedal to "excite" the pedal so to speak. Master
volume on the second boost of the Super Duper allows for use as OD as well, and boosts are cascading only.

CHANNEL 1:
This channel is a conventional Super Hard-On (TM), which I will henceforth refer to as the SHO, in order to reduce potential offense to young ears and sensitive persons. Its gain control is on the far right, and its LED is yellow. If you are familiar with the SHO, you'll know that it's a very sparkly sounding high input-impedance preamp with incredible headroom, wide-ranging gain (unity to 60 X), and a maximum volume that will knock out your fillings. Channel one has no Master Volume control, but it's cascaded into Channel 2, which does...

CHANNEL 2 AND THE MASTER VOLUME:
This channel has the very same circuit as Channel 1, but the bleeder resistor on the output has been replaced with a Master Volume control, which allows the user to turn down the output volume even if the gain is set quite high. The knob on the left is the gain, and the middle knob is the Master Volume, and the LED is red. When both channels are on, or if only Channel 2 is on, the Master Volume is active. If you leave the Master wide open, you have two identical SHO pedals in one box, which are cascaded.
WHAT DOES THIS PEDAL SOUND LIKE?
You might wonder just how insane this pedal sounds when you crank up both channels and turn them both on. Well, I'll tell you. I can't get my Les Paul to stop feeding back at any audible volume level on my Marshall when both channels are wide open, and that's with the amp set at 1. I'm happy about that. Of course, this is not the only setting on the pedal. I don't think there's a musician around who wouldn't be happy to have multiple clean boost pedals set to predictable levels available on stage. This pedal gives you a total of four volume levels, ranging, at your choice, anywhere from perfectly clean to ragingly overdriven. Level 1, your guitar is true-bypassed with both channels off. Level 2, you turn on Channel 1. Level 3, you turn off Channel 1 and turn on Channel 2. This is easy because you can put your foot on both switches at once and alternate between the two channels if you want. Level 4, you turn on both channels.

There is no tone shaping in this pedal. It's two perfectly linear high-gain high input-impedance preamps that can be cascaded, with a total gain that ranges from unity to 3600. That's right, the maximum gain with both channels wide open is a whopping 3600, which is so completely distorted, hissy, feedbacky, and insane, that you'll never ever have a steady relationship again. Or a lease. Or a pet. Luckily, with the Master Volume, you can listen to what it would sound like to lose everything you love at a reasonable volume. Naturally, because there is no tone-shaping, your guitar just sounds like a really loud version of your guitar, and your amp sounds like a really big version of your amp, and if your normal tone is somewhat bloated, it will get very very bloated when you use this pedal set to high gains. It does best if you are close to getting the tone you want out of your gear already, but just need a boost to make it go over the top. Keep in mind that you can set up the two channels to give you any amount of gain, from a soft bluesy boost in two stages to a crunchy rock level, to a wild sustaining beast. 

A very appropriately named effect pedal; it will literally create just about any fuzz tone you've ever heard or dreamed of as long as you have the time to get a handle on its operation. Our best selling fuzz pedal for many years.

"This is a five-knob fuzz using two new old-stock sixties germanium transistors.

The circuit is not modeled after any classic fuzz design, but should have been around when Leary was still lucid.

Although the five knobs are named for the parameters over which they seem to have the most control, please don't hold me to it.

They are controls for various operating levels and biases, and basically shape you a personalized fuzz." 

-Zachary Vex

Overview: The Box of Rock™ is Z.Vex Effect's first "distortion" pedal, highly specialized to simulate the "everything on 10" sound of a classic Marshall ® JTM45 non-master-volume amplifier. You may use the Box of Rock effectively with many different amplifiers, but to get the sound I heard when I designed it, try it through a Marshall at least

once. You may use your guitar's volume control to adjust for the exact amount of distortion you need, all the way down to very clean and clear with most drive settings.

You will notice the words "distortron engine" on the Vexter version of this pedal (no, that's not a misprint) on the pedal. This is what I named my distortion circuit... call me crazy. On the hand-painted version, the stomp switch on the right is labeled "ROCK" instead, because our paint brushes are too wide for so many small letters.

The Box of Rock also contains an extremely high-headroom, unity-to-50X gain booster with nominal input impedance and low hiss. It is very similar to the SHO boost circuit, with refinements to make it sound more like a standard amp input and less glassy.

The boost channel can be used alone or in conjunction with the "distortron engine" channel. The boost channel follows the distortion channel so that the distortion is able to hit your amp harder (at a higher volume) when both switches are engaged, for boosting solos and what-not.

Look out when boosting what-not. 8^) The Controls: Drive: Sets the amount of distortion. Start around 1:00 o'clock. Tone: Adjust for treble content. Start around 2:00 o'clock. Vol: Adjust for distortron engine volume level. Start around 9:00 o'clock.

Boost: Sets the boost level, which is engaged with the left stomp switch. Start around 11:00 o'clock. 

Basically, the ooh-wah is sort of a combination of a tremolo and a wah wah pedal.

If you're familiar with seventies synths, it's exactly like an analog sequencer/random sample-and-hold controlling a mellow bandpass filter.

You have a choice between 4, 6, or 8 steps/channels for your wah.

The 6 step positions works well with 6/8 or 3/4 time songs when in seek-mode, and you can control the total number of possible "channels" of wah with that switch in random mode.

In seek-mode, the ooh-wah steps through from one wah setting to another and starts over after it gets to the end of the sequence.

There's a total of 9 knobs, the leftmost being a speed control, and the other being wah settings, which get brighter when you turn them to the left.

You can set up patterns which accentuate notes in arpeggiated chords at particular spots.

Or, you can set the thing to do a sort of tremolo echo in seek-mode, with the knobs set like this: 7:00, 5:00, 8:00, 5:00, 11:00, 5:00, 2:00, 5:00 (these are o'clock positions, not spinal tap 1-11). Then set the speed control for a happy tempo.

Another fun setting is to put each knob at a different position and put the pedal in random mode with the random switch.

Also, try putting all the knobs in a very narrow range in the middle of the wah sound (about 1 or 2:00) and set the speed pretty fast in random mode... fun burbling sound. Give me enough knobs, and I can control the world. 

The Distortron is also in the new Vextron series of tough-painted, single silkscreen pedals.

This pedal is a modified version of our Box of Rock's Distortron Engine.

The improvements include a gain boost switch for added sizzle and a sub control switch which has the original Box of Rock level on setting 3, slightly shaved subs at 2, and notably shaved at 1.

The amounts were carefully selected to reduce "flubbiness" that occurs when using amps with heavy low-end response.

Try it last in your chain, and beat it up with your other effects... it stacks like a dream. 

The Mastotron is a sub-heavy silicon fuzz with some new twists:

An input impedance control that adjusts for weaker passive pickups (turn all the way to "push') or for active pickup basses and guitars (turn down a bit), or to line level for re-amping ("relax").

It works very well for re-amping bass tracks that need to be fuzzed up after tracking, and keyboards, which usually overload fuzzes.

There's also a three-position sub control switch, a treble tone control, flexible pulse width control for square to narrow pulses, and a wide fuzz depth control.

More flexible than any silicon fuzz to date, the Mastotron is part of the new Vextron series with heavy paint, a single silkscreen layer, and the new black 3PDT switch.

Rock!  

You don't have to be old enough to be a hippie to get off on this wild pedal.

The circuit uses a combination of germanium diode and transistor fuzz generation and a ring modulator to turn simple chords into nutso note combinations and complex chords into incredible noise...and makes solos soar impossibly high.

Not your basic octafuzz this pedal is for the guitarist that would like to sound a little unique. Imagine that!!!