Video: Recreating 5 Classic Fuzz Flavors with Modern Guitar Pedals

Vintage fuzz pedals are wonderful—but they can sometimes be finicky, unreliable, or expensive. Luckily, to get the same great fuzz tones you know and love from your favorite records, you can find them in modern pedals.

In our video above, Andy Martin runs through five famous fuzz flavors with pedals you can find all day long on Reverb.

To begin, the JHS Muffuletta recreates nearly every coveted variation of the Big Muff circuit for all manner of Muff tones, from The Carpenters to Dinosaur Jr., as Andy says. Of its six settings, one is JHS' own modern take on the Muff.

For the high-gain, mid-range-heavy sounds of '60s fuzz—say, The Rolling Stones, Yardbirds, Zeppelin—grab a Keeley Fuzz Bender. It has a mixed-transistor fuzz circuit, including both silicon and germanium, and combines that with an active EQ for powerful boosts.

The Dunlop Germanium Fuzz Face Mini will get you that early, famed Hendrix fuzz tone (as can the brand-new Dunlop JHW1 Jimi Hendrix '69 Psych Fuzz Face). By cranking the Fuzz Face's fuzz, you can then find sweet spots for both low-gain and high-gain tones with your guitar's volume knob.

For the high-gain fuzz of early punk sounds of The Stooges or the slightly more tailored sound of '90s alt-rock, the EarthQuaker Devices Terminal Destructive Fuzz Device is a great choice. Modeled after the Shin-Ei-style JAX Fuzz, it's a good way to get that same vintage tone in a more reliable and affordable stompbox.

Danelectro's The Eisenhower Fuzz is a versatile octave fuzz that can give a range of classic tone, like the octave-up of an Octavia pedal or the detuned, cranked gain sounds of the band Electric Wizard.