ZenZero's FuzU is a beautifully harmonic, extended range hybrid take on a Big Muff

There are so many Japanese Big Box Muff varieties out there - typically just the classic 3-knob styles, that I thought it would be nice to feature a more compact and actually more versatile and potent variety than most out there.

Controls - Gain, Volume, Mids, Tone

The Yellow accent for the enclosure graphics / labels is funnily quite invisible under several / most different lighting conditions, so possibly not the most ergonomic of enclosures from a legibility standpoint - while it’s not too much to remember 4 parameters - and your ears will tell you exactly what’s going on. Really easy to dial in too!

Using 2 x 2N5088 and 2 x 2N5089 silicon transistors, this circuit supposedly combines two different era Muffs - I’m guessing Ram’s Head + Green Russian as it’s not quite as strident as a Triangle and has that lovely warmth to it that you get with a lot of the Soviet varieties.

It reminds me a little of my Loe Sounds Big Muff variants - the She Fuzz and Cha’Cha Fuzz - while not quite so richly harmonic but really close - and with the same sort of 4th mids control they can all get into fairly similar territory.

This has the volume level of the Cha’Cha - which means it’s a little on the lower output side for me - so I use it in conjunction with my Strymon Sunset Treble Booster. It really does sound glorious for my preferred settings.

Preferred setting currently are Gain @ 3 o’c, Volume @ Max, Mids @ Max, and Tone @ 3 o’c for maximum texture and harmonics. A truly great compact MUff - which could just do with a little more output volume!

ZenZero say the following about their FuzU :

"Our take on the venerable Muff circuit. We took two Muffs from different eras and made them work together. We also widen the gain range, added an independent MIDS controls for versatility, and rounded everything off with our special MOSFETs to give it ZenZero’s signature crunch"

I got mine for a pretty good price from the ZenZero Reverb.com Store - where they typically go for $175. Currently out of stock.

Considering Andy Martin featured this on the Reverb.com YouTube channe (per first demo below), I would have thought more would have been sold - while mine has the fairly low serial number of #017 - so not sure quite what the significance of that is. These are well worthy getting though once they’re back in stock!

The FuzU was one of the 25 pedals featured in my recent A-Z of Japanese Boutique Pedal Brands article, per the below visual :