Mythos completes its potent One-Knob Mini Fuzz Quadrilogy with its new Hephaestus Variable Voltage Fuzz

I obviously need to add the Hephaestus to the collection as I have each of the other 3 corners of that quadrilogy. And where for the others the single knob is a sort of Master Volume - i.e. combined Volume and Gain, for the Hephaestus you control how many Volts pass through the circuit. At its core it’s a fairly classic 2-transistor Fuzz - albeit with some smart variations. While when you turn the knob down beyond the 1 o’c mark - you get a really cool harmonic sub-octave which does some really special things with the texture of the fuzz - with gets more accentuated as you further starve the circuit.

The Hephaestus was initially release as a compact enclosure limited / special edition - but it was so liked that Zach decided to make it more generally available in the smaller form factor.

Each of these is a classic really and with different accents on classic fuzz - some more raspy and spotty, and others more fuzzy-drive or overdrive even. There really needs to be a boxset of all 4!

I own the Golden Fleece in its original mini format - while Karen Schierhorn of BIG EAR pedals fame modernised the design of the range a couple of years back. I’m kind of split with the styling - preferring some of the prior variants over some of the newer ones - but overall really well balanced.

I feel that the older designs were more in keeping with the ’Mythos’ legends part of the brand - while Zach evidently wanted to take the brand in a different directions - it certainly looks clean and classy in its current incarnation - but it may have lost some of its evocation in the process.

In any case you can’t go wrong with these 4 mini fuzzes featured here - and I’ve picked out some choice demos to underline that!

The Hephaestus  and Golden Fleece retail for $139 and equivalent from all the usual Mythos dealers. If you want the Au Gold - you need to get that from Mass Street Music ($149) where it’s a lower gain derivations of the Golden Fleece. The Signature Joey Landreth High Road Mini Fuzz has alas been discontinued for now - but you see them every now and again on Reverb.com - usually for just under $200 or thereabouts!