Farmer Factory's Fresh Fuzz is the perfect encapsulation of that cult 70's Seamoon Opamp Fuzz

Obviously the catalyst for this was JHS Pedals’ recent second batch of Legends of Fuzz releases which included among them the ’Berkeley’ Fuzz - a circuit replica of the 1973 Seamoon Fresh Fuzz. Which despite me owning somewhere in the region of 600 fuzzes - I had never come across that variety before. While those Legends of Fuzz pedals sound pretty great - I really don’t gel with those oversized enclosures with top-mounted knobs - so I was always going to be on the look out for the perfect alternative candidate.

This is an incredibly simple fuzz really - which has just a single JRC4558D Opamp at its core - with all the clipping and distortion coming from that one component really. The whole circuit amounts to only 18 components in total - and 2 controls.

Controls - Gain, Bite.

By default this fuzz is pretty fat and juicy, but also a little dark and dense at the same time, so possibly future versions of this circuit might benefit from an additional control or two.

It sounds pretty mighty right from the start with a glorious and richly textured breakup timbre with both dials at noon. Dialling Gain back to 9 o’c and Bite down to c 8 o’c or just after the volume comes in - delivers a beautiful fairly smooth overdrive sound.

Cranking both dials kind of overloads the circuit with compression - where I don’t really like to take gain beyond 3 o’c, and Bite is mostly best around 8-10 o’c for me - at noon really is as far as I like to take that control as it kind of increased the density of the breakup too - where at 8-10 o’c the output is relatively open.

You can also get into distortion territory with both knobs fairly cranked but you do get a load of compression at those levels of output too - which might not suit everybody.

Generally this Fresh Fuzz is at its best for me as an Overdrive and Fuzzy-Drive. I would rather classify it more as a fuzzy-drive than and out-and-out fuzz. A really distinct and interesting voicing for sure.

I got my Fresh Fuzz for €144 + shipping - courtesy of the Farmer Factory Reverb.com store. In fact I so like my Fresh Fuzz that I went back for a really cool 3-knob take on the Pep Box Fuzz. You can still sort of get the original 2-knob version of that - but I really don’t like that one’s oversized / top-mounted knobs form factor - so I much prefer an expanded-range / extended features compact edition. 

I see that John Lyons has rushed out his own 3-knob take of the Fresh Fuzz, while I’ve already been speaking to Farmer Factory’s Sebastien about the possibility of adding a tone control or two to his circuit at some stage - definitely worth exploring.

As it is - the Farmer Factory Fresh Fuzz is truly a perfect accurate circuit replica of the original - so a very worthy representative of the genre! I’m delighted to own this particular edition - with that elegant circuit facia graphic.