The Immense Free Fall Diver Huge Mini Fuzz is finally in the collection after a long chase

I’ve been chasing the until now elusive Free Fall Diver Fuzz for a good 3 years. This tiny boutique Made-in-Japan fuzz has been incredibly difficult to get a hold of as are many of the Japanese boutique pedals - as they just don’t cater for the export market. I tried variously to get a new one supplied from Japan to no avail.

Then I spotted some on Ebay - often at hugely inflated prices and sold by the time I got to them. I hunted down an original vendor of one of those to see if he could obtain any more and he quoted me at 3 times the upper market valuation - which was of course ludicrous and I passed on it.

So it was quite fortunate that I came upon one pristine second-hand one that I was actually able to secure - and which was delivered finally late last week.

Up until that time I had just heard the two short demos - as below. And I’m delighted to report that this is a pedal which exactly meets my lofty expectations. It’s always a particularly joy getting such a massive sound from so tiny a pedal - but this pedal really lives up to its ’Huge’ moniker - which creates almost a liquid distortion of Big Muff - great for chugging and searing lead tones. The core tonality is just superb with an amazing balance of low and high end - I find its core texture totally enthralling!

Also as per the upper one of the demos - it works magically with any number of overdrives, fuzzes and distortions going into it - as demo’d below with a Vemuram Jan Ray. There are only the usual 3 controls - Volume. Sustain and Tone - but it’s surprising just how varied a tonality and texture you can create with those dials set up and down the taper,

I’m thinking this has to be my favourite Mini Fuzz now - it’s core sound is just so appealing to me - and it’s a lot more versatile than it looks.

Admittedly I paid a little over the odds for it, and that the had added customs fees on top - for sure my most expensive mini pedal to--date - but of course totally worthy it. And importantly nowhere near the lofty height that I’d been previously quoted.

Mine is numbered  #025 and dated 2021 . 7 . 17 and while I can’t really read the signature - its initials are definitely M and L. I would assume made in very small batches though!

I have several favourite settings - moving the Volume, Sustain and Tone dials into different hemispheres all delivers really cool results - particularly Volume and Sustain - while I tend to have Tone set fairly high. The Demos certainly ring very true and authentic for me for those positions on the dials. All those tones heard in the demos are incredibly easy to coax out of this pedal.

This has become somewhat of a Holy Grail pedal for me - which I’m not sure will elicit quite as much excitement for others - but I am indeed utterly delighted to have finally landed one of these. It just sounds really really HUGE!

It was priced at around £280 equivalent with shipping included - where original Japanese price sort of roughly correlated with $180-$200 (¥23,000). Obviously with customs charges added this was a touch more expensive - and has for sure becomes my priciest mini - but not by too much. It’s amazing just how fantastic some mini pedals can sound - and this is most certainly my favourite Mini Fuzz to-date. It’s not quite as versatile as say the Mini Clusterfuzz from Function F(x) - so you need to choose between turrbo-charged sonics or versatility.

I’d be fascinated to hear what you guys think! How do you like the sound of the Huge?