Loe Sounds Cha'Cha Fuzz is another unique take on the Big Muff format - specially honed for chords

I believe my Big Muff capsule collection is somewhere north of 100 pedals now - while I still get pleasantly surprised by new and unique takes on the format. Both this and its predecessor Lady ♀ Fuzz have their roots in the Sovtek Big Muffs and in particular the Green Russian variety. The Lady Fuzz was inspired by EQD’s Hoof Fuzz in part but with its own highly textured smooth, bold and searing tone. All my Loe Sounds pedals seem to share unique enhanced textures and extra harmonics that you don’t typically find in genre-equivalent pedals. Aisha obvious has a wonderful ear for tone - and there’s something really special about how she adapts and evolves those circuits.

Both my previous Loe Sounds fuzzes have really decent amounts of output volume - while the Cha’Cha has much less - to the extent that I need to post-boost it to get me to the level of the others.

Aisha designed the pedal to have much more articulation and openness than the Lady Fuzz - so the Cha’Cha has a less dense character. In fact although not raspy as such, it has much more of a rasp to its texture than I’m accustomed to for a muff - and at times it sounds really nothing like a typical muff. It’s certainly very distinct and works really well with chords - as intended - while Big Muffs have typically tended to be used more for lead-lines and single notes - such is the nature of that circuit’s core character.

Controls - Mids, Tone, Volume, Gain.

In explaining the differences for this new fuzz, Aisha told me the following :

"The Cha’Cha Fuzz is an IC-based fuzz in the GR camp. It’s more of a medium gain thing, designed for playing nice with chunky chords while retaining a smoothness. Since the Lady Fuzz is such a loud beast, I wanted something that could be great for playing chord passages while also sitting in the mix easily. Between the Tone and Mids controls, you can really dial in a range of different types of sounds as well."

With most fuzzes I tend to end up with the Volume and Gain dimed out, and the eq adjusted to taste. Since I mostly play with humbuckers - the EQ tends to be set towards the brighter side of things - and actually for both the Cha’Cha and the Lady Fuzz - the Mids control typically at 3 o’c, where I’ve settled with the Tone control at 3 o’c also on the Cha’Cha, but as high as 4 o’c on the Lady Fuzz.

To my ears the Lady Fuzz sounds more like a classic Muff - albeit obviously an evolved one with more texture, while, and as mentioned, the Cha’Cha at the brighter end of its range sounds more like a really smartly clipped distortion (one that uses a whole array of textural clipping diodes) - whose open-pored nature gives it quite a different feel - which is why I supposed it sounds so great with chords.

For these kinds of fuzzes you typically get more harmonics and textural artefacts the more saturated the output is - and a lot of us like to dime Fuzz Faces and Big Muffs in particular for that reason. Some Big Muffs can suffer at the extremes of range as you get more and more compression - while both of Aisha’s Muff Fuzzes just seem to be perfectly balanced - but there is certainly more compression apparent in the Lady Fuzz.

I’m slightly ambivalent about the drop in output volume on the Cha’Cha as I have various ’tone components’ on the board which are brilliant at boosting and ’fixing’ lower level output devices - while retaining their essential character. Higher up the chain I use the Strymon Sunset and Boost function on the Empress ParaEQ2, and downstream I have an optional boost on the JA Bloom, currently as the board stands - also the Xotic RC2 - and a variety of overdrives I can use as boosts also. I will probably be bringing the Strymon Riverside back into the chain this month as that is another brilliant tone component which I use a lot, and overall it’s quite a bit more versatile and easier to use than the 29 Pedals FLWR overdrive which took over that slot for the first half of the year - the Riverside is also a lot more granular.

Most of my big muffs have some kind of additional Mids control - whether a wholly variable knob, or 2 or 3-way toggle-switch - to give you Flat and Mids Boosted options besides the usual Big Muff Scoop. The combination of Tone and Mids controls on the Cha’Cha and Lady Fuzz is brilliant - while I would quite like to see Aisha experiment in the future with a Tilt EQ alongside the Mids - that is a combination I really love, but you don’t see it very often on fuzzes - but it really works, and I feel it would be particularly useful on Muffs.

I think Alisha’s flagship fuzz is still her wonderfully textured Superfuzz - while the Lady and Cha’Cha run that pretty close. You don’t really need to decide between those - you really need them all - and even the two that are based on roughly the same circuit don’t really sound anything like each other. I would like the Cha’Cha with a touch more onboard volume - but it’s pretty much perfect as is - and does exactly what Aisha describes - indeed sounding kind of magnificent with chords.

The style of the enclosure is quite different to my first two Loe Sounds Fuzzes - as you can see in the visual below - but that is very much the nature of this brand - Aisha is constantly evolving and moving things along, and even though the Superfuzz circuit has been the same for a while now - it exists in a myriad of different boxes - some wholly unrecognisable from each other - bar the 3 knob topology.

It feels like a real privilege to own even one of these - and I now have my very own Loe Sounds Trifecta. I’m already looking forward to my next one!

Once more my pal Matt Bradford does a brilliant job on the demo - he’s too good really as he makes everything sound like you have to have it - and particularly these very special fuzzes from Aisha.