The Black Mass Missionary V2 is a Fantastically Versatile and Different kind of 4-Transistor Fuzz

The blurb for the Missionary Fuzz on the Black Mass site consists mostly of rather oblique and obtuse descriptors and so I had to remove the back panel to see what was going on at the core of the circuit. Which turns out to be 2 x 2N2222 + 1 x BC108C + 1 x MPSA18 Silicon Transistors - so essentially a different kind of 4-Transistor Fuzz - which Black Mass’s Kaden explains is actually much closer to a Fuzz Face / EQ Exciter topology. His First Herald is his Muff type variety - and the Missionary is its own thing really - which can though produce everything up to and including formidable and thick Big Muff style tones.

In fact it mostly reminds me of a sort of junior stripped down version of my good friend Rikk Cabecas’ TX Pedals Animalizzer Fuzz with which it roughly shares 5 of the same of those larger pedal’s 9 controls, and covers similar territory :

Controls - Level, Pregain, Body (Mids : Scoop > Flat), Fuzz (Gain), Bass.

The interplay of the Pregain and Fuzz controls in particular give this pedal a huge range of gain, character and texture - which spans everything from a slightly dirty overdrive to fully saturated sustaining all-out Muff style onslaught. Much like with the Animalizzer - the amount of Bass going into the circuit has a very significant impact on the gain and texture of the fuzz - and the Scoop to Flat Mids ’Body’ control perfectly complements that.

The end result being that you can get into all kinds of territory you typically can’t with a regular fuzz or Big Muff in particular. If you’re used to deploying the Animalizzer, then this really is very much like a stripped down version of that with extraordinary range coverage. Interestingly Rikk Cabecas has been working on a Junior version of his own Animalizzer for a while now - so it will be cool to see exactly how they compare.

This was one of the great fuzzes I missed out on last year - and so I was quick to make amends early January. The Missionary V2 has already received all manner of accolades and was in quite a few best of lists at the end of last year (including mine) and deservedly so. This is really my favourite kind of take on fuzzes which yields so much more potential than is typically available - particularly at this enclosure size.

The Missionary V2 also utilises a transformer-based pickup simulator which means you can position the pedal anywhere in the chain for optimal output.

I got mine from good friend Andy at Break the Machine where they were priced at around £169 - alas currently out of stock - but well worth a re-order / pre-order! These seem to be universally out of stock currently, so I guess I got mine in at the 11th hour! More will be in stock soon enough ...

Any fans of the ’Missionary’ here?