Fjord Fuzz - Daniel Thornhill's Cutting Edge Futuristic Fuzz Pedals from the West Coast of Norway

The part of Pedal-building that Daniel enjoys most is the designing and prototyping of the actual fuzz circuits and designing the look and feel of the enclosures. Daniel is not shy to collaborate when he needs to - working with Tom Kogut of TomKat Pedals on PCB designs, and collaborating with Steve Demedash for soft-switching relays and Mammoth Electronics on the enclosures for instance.

Along the way there have been all manner of modern production techniques being employed here in the sourcing of components, as well as the final build. Daniel has innovated truly smart signature laser-engraved semi-translucent copper-topped facia plates which have the pedal symbol and function parameter icons etched/carved into the very surface - and lit up / back-lit by interior LED's. Elements of that have found their way into his neighbour Knut Olai's Pladask Elektrisk pedals - of which I have the latest Fabrikat - which very obviously has a similar facia plate design which Daniel helped out with.

The fact that all those electronics can be accommodated into the smaller 1590B size enclosures - with top-mounted jacks and elegant soft-touch footswitches is nothing short of an engineering marvel - particularly considering the aesthetic functionality of the pedal above and beyond each core fuzz circuit and dual circuits even.

Daniel is the antithesis to those vintage style builders - preferring to utilise more readily available standard modern plastic encased TO-92 style Silicon transistors (2N2222 and 2N5088 for instance) - rather than chasing various metal can unobtanium style NOS components. Once Dan has honed and refined his circuit he wants to be able to build as many of that type as there is demand for and as long as he feels motivated to do such. He's a stickler for quality control, but doesn't feel that he needs to personally assemble everything by hand himself - and if there is a more efficient and consistently sustainable way of doing things - then that's what he's going to make happen.

Dan derives particular pleasure in being able to replicate classic circuits to the highest degrees of fidelity - but using entirely modern, relatively easily sourced and better behaved components - for instance he has developed a fantastic Tone Bender MK I.V circuit using Silicon 2N4123 for Q1 and 2N3704 for Q2 Transistors versus the original's twin Germanium OC75's.

Readers of this blog should know by now my own personal preferences, and this combination of blistering tones, modern looks and compact dimensions is absolutely the kind of thing I gravitate towards.

I have been peripherally aware of Fjord Fuzz pedals for a while now - probably a couple of years or so - but as Dan does not have a website yet, and relies almost entirely on Instagram and Reverb.com - my acquaintances with the pedals have been rather fleeting until recently. A big part of my doing this article is that there is currently no long-form material - no proper articles or features on Fjord Fuzz on the Internet, and I had to do a lot of research myself to join up all the dots on this.

Turns out that not too dissimilar to myself, Daniel is the progeny of an English mother and Nordic father - where his family settled in Norway, versus my own roots being in Iceland. There's obviously a notable mix of influences there which no doubt inform Dan's creative impulses. To my ears Dan sounds very English and obviously carries that rock-and-roll legacy to a degree - from his mother's side of the family.

I only properly connected with Fjord Fuzz less than 2 months ago - which probably has much to do with Dan's recent 're-packaging' and refinements of this now official line of 4 pedals. I believe this is the first time there has been an official roster as such - as previously pedals tended to be issued in more sporadic individual micro-batches, very occasionally 2 or 3 varieties together, but never as formalised as the range of 4 is right now.

When I connected properly with Fjord Fuzz there was just a single pedal available anywhere - an early 'Tape Icon' V1 edition of the Bifrost being sold by an English collector on Reverb.com - I of course snapped that up very quickly (pictured above). While now the whole range is available both on Reverb.com and on These Go To 11 - which some of you will be familiar with. Alongside a couple of more local Norwegian retailers which I will detail in Final Thoughts.

For my own purposes I love each of these fuzzes and will most definitely have all eventually - that decision has already been made - probably by mid-September, as I'm already over-extended with obligations for August. I think everyone should have at least an Embla Fuzz, while the Bifrost Lo-Fi Fuzz Delay is a really interesting textured mix and so much fun to play (see my own settings in the above pic), and the Gjallarhorn and Odin are both fantastic takes on two different types of octave-style fuzzes. Pricing right now is circa £170 equivalent for each pedal - which is great value really. These pedals sound every bit as good as they look - and they look amazing, while the tarnishing copper facia is a sort of relicking effect which may be an acquired taste for some - for me it's just the right degree of cool mix between steam-punk and sci-fi!

This pairs one of my all-time favourite all-rounder Silicon transistors - the 2N5088 x 2 (initially associated with Big Muffs, but used very widely for most types of fuzz applications nowadays), with the PT2399 delay chip which has been particularly deployed of late as a more Lo-fi style gritty delay - e.g. by MI Effects. The pedal has 5 controls indicated by icons as usual - Volume | Gain (Delay/Fuzz Mix to a degree) | Feedback | Mix (Rather a randomizing element) | Delay Time. You have dual footswitches - the right-hand one is the On/ByPass, while the left-hand one is for Feedback Overload which cranks the feedback to psychedelic oscillation levels. The current design has its main symbol as a series of ever-decreasing circles - looking something like an electrical hob, while my earlier edition from a batch of 14 has a Cassette Tape symbol instead (per the above demo video actually too) - otherwise the pedals are pretty much identical (on the newer ones the icons are lit up in white - including the (ff) logo! This is a pretty cool and unusual fuzz which I feel many should enjoy - Fuzz + Delay has always been a great combination in any case and I can jam with this pedal for hours on end - you just get a really satisfactory pulsating wall of sound here that is a just such a joy to play along with.

This 4-knob significantly deviated Bee Baa circuit derivative is Fjord Fuzz's current all-rounder Flagship fuzz - running Silicon transistors - usually BC549, 2N5088 and 2N5089 - with all the usual modern tricks to allow you to place said pedal anywhere in your signal chain and deploy with ultimate and optimal consistency at all times via those 4 controls - Volume | Gain | Bias | Thickness. The last mentioned is a sort of Bass-cut dial allowing you to to clean up the lower-end frequencies. Inside you have the usual LED brightness trim-pot, you also have the leaf-shaped Internal Bass Module which you can flip around and re-fit 180 degrees to allow for full bass pass-through - in effect disabling the Thickness dial I suppose. This is just a really great all-rounder fuzz with plenty of range on tap on each of those 4 dials. Daniel discovered the circuit when he got to try Øystein Braut's original version of Bee Baa, Øystein's band being of course Electric Eye - where the bass player also makes significant use of Fjord Fuzz pedals. If you're generally considering or thinking about introducing yourself to Fjord Fuzz pedals, then this all-rounder Embla is your most likely starting point.

This is Fjord Fuzz's evolved collaborative take on the Shin-Ei FY-6 Super-Fuzz working with cult band Motorpsycho, where there was an earlier take on that per the above video simply called the Fjord-Fuzz. In any case a high gain harmonic octave style fuzz utilising 6 silicon transistors - here probably something like 2N5088's which are often used for this genre. You get just 3 controls here - with a large Gain dial, and then 2 smaller Octave Bias and Volume controls. There are no up-to-date demos of this version of the pedal - so I've made use of the earlier Fjord-Fuzz variant which should sound pretty similar.

The Odin is Dan's take on the Foxx Tone Machine Octave Fuzz - stripped down to bare essentials, and then separated out into individual octave fuzz and core fuzz circuits. There is just a single control knob here - the large central Volume dial, but then you have dual footswitches - the right-hand one being On/ByPass while the left allows you to switch between the two circuits - Octave Fuzz and Core Fuzz. The Odin's Triangle symbol starts off pink as pictured up top, but changes to blue when Octave is activated. Note that beyond the Green Embla leaf and Yellow Gjallarhorn horn symbol, LED colours are not definitively decided yet - the idea is to have a full rainbow of icons for different pedals - but some of the colourways might change in the future until one permanently 'sticks' to that pedal variant.