We have got a lot of love for the Focus Fuzz in all its guises – the limited edition silicon variant was a doozie – but Great Eastern FX has just taken this fuzz pedal and dialled it up a notch.
Make that two, three notches. Because it’s not really just a fuzz, because the Focus Fuzz Deluxe has got a three-way rotary switch to cycle through boost, overdrive and fuzz modes, and what’s that down there? Oh, yes, a second footswitch. That is for applying a transistor-based analogue octave-up.
Okay, we’re sold. Is there anything this little gold metal guitar effects pedal does not do? There’s bound to be something, but at least no one can say Great Eastern has not made full use of the enclosure – and arguably taken the Focus Fuzz paradigm to its logical conclusion.
Once more, it has that classy vintage studio hardware aesthetic that we’ve come to know and love from the English pedal brand. The knobs look like they’ve been sourced from 1962. That textured metal enclosure… it’s all too much.
But let’s think about the original purpose of the Focus Fuzz; it was to convince the guitar player who didn’t get on with fuzz, and there are many out there, that it was a viable pedalboard option, working with single-coil and humbucker-equipped guitars alike.
Much of the persuading was done by the Focus control, and we have that here again, adding gain as you turn it clockwise, but also introducing more midrange definition, more high-end content, all to help your electric guitar find a space in the mix – not unlike a treble booster. Keep it below noon and your sound is warmer, thicker.
That’s for when the pedal is in fuzz mode. In its boost and overdrive modes, think of the Focus dial as a gain and presence dial.
There is also a Fuzz dial, adding saturation and gain, tweaking the transistor bias as it goes. That gain and saturation is supplied by as hybrid silicon-germanium circuit (there is an NOS germanium transistor under the hood here). And there’s a Level control, controlling overall output.
As for the Focus Fuzz Deluxe’s boost mode, this is described as an “almost clean” boost, with the suggestion that this could be an always-on option for mediation the relationship between guitar and guitar amp. The overdrive mode, meanwhile, is for “organic, amp-like overdrive” – dig in and it’ll respond, and so forth.
The Focus Fuzz Deluxe takes 9V DC from a pedalboard power supply, drawing around 10mA. It is available now, and it is priced £299. Not cheap but think of it as three or four pedals in one. See Great Eastern FX for more details.
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