Coffee Shop Pedals' Smart Affogato Programmable Fuzz adds 3-Band EQ and 3 Presets to a versatile Silicon Fuzz Circuit

Readers should know by now that I’m a huge fan of Chase Bliss’s ’Analog Heart + Digital Brain’ approach - but we rarely get to see that in the fuzz domain. Benno from Coffee Shop Pedals, based in Saskatchewan Canada, has done exactly that - where he has married a digital brain to his core cool Analog Discrete Silicon Fuzz Circuit - whereby you can save all 5 knob positions to one of 3 Presets.

Controls - Bass, Mid, Treble, Volume, Fuzz, Preset Footswitch (Red > Green > Blue), Bypass Footswitch - Press Both to scroll through Presets and Press-Hold Preset Button to enter Preset Mode where Bypass then scrolls through the Preset slots and Preset finally saves them to selected slot.

At its heart this is a 2-Stage Silicon Transistor Circuit - where Benno has selected a couple of really versatile universal Silicon Transistors which are particularly strong for fuzz applications. You get a very significant range across all 5 dials - where it’s also fairly rare to see 3-Band EQ on a fuzz - for ultimate tone-shaping prowess.

Even though Affogato’s 2 Gain Stages / 2 Transistor makeup might lead you to believe that this was somewhat evolved from a Fuzz Face circuit (as I initially presumed) - it’s actually rather more Big Muff in nature - while it’s its own thing really - but certainly has a flavour of Muff!

The circuit also benefits from Asymmetrical Clipping - which helps deliver more breakup texture and harmonics - for a richer and more complex sounding fuzz character. It really helps to accentuate the nature of those two well-chosen Silicon Transistors - with a very finely balanced and nuanced output.

Obviously the beauty of this pedal is that whenever you hit upon a wonderful sounding sweet spot you can then immediately save it for posterity via one of the 3 Presets. Then during playback you have 3 different killer modes of play that you can instantly flip between.

I’m already very familiar with this sort of dual footswitch system for saving and accessing Presets - and this pedal is therefore right down my street! I will certainly be looking to add it to the reference collection at the earliest opportunity.

The Affogato Programmable Fuzz is priced at $239 CAD, which approximates to $185 USD - available right now from the Coffee Shop Pedals Webstore!

I know a number of you are almost as keen a fuzz fans as I am - is the Affogato one that piques your interest?

I will of course report back further once I have landed one of these!