It was the fuzz

[Delta]

One of my go to dirt boxes for recording is an original Boss FZ-2. It's a pretty radical pedal in that there are a lot of options, especially considering that it's such an old design. My favorite setting is fairly low volume, medium bottom end, high treble, high gain on position 2. This creates a very sparkling, garish tone for chords and leads. As I've changed my pedal board up a bit and added more guitars over the years I was starting to have increased noise in my dirt signal, especially with humbuckers.. At first I thought it was a compression pedal problem. Today I finally buckled down and did a thorough sound check, meticulously trying to find where the problem was. I did this with my Strat. I'll do this with my humbucker guitars later. Well, you guessed it. The problem was the Fuzz. It wasn't getting along with my other dirt boxes. Once I lowered the gain and treble, all was well. Decreased noise level without compromising on the tone. The real challenge lies ahead with the HB axes, but I'm confident that I'll get the settings that I want. This may be a no brainer for more experienced players out there, but I thought this info would help some of the less experienced. I guess the moral of the story is not to get hung up on the settings of your favorite pedals as the dynamics around them change.

[Larryz]

Watch out for the Fuzz! Glad you got it working for you Delta!

[Caevan O’Shite]

It always was.

 

I guess the moral of the story is not to get hung up on the settings of your favorite pedals as the dynamics around them change.

You're right. And not only that, sometimes some great new sounds and uses can be found when one strays away from what one's used to in control-settings, and discover some newfound versatility.