Signal Chain Part 1 - Let’s talk about Fuzz Placement

What is a buffer, and why should I care? 

It turns your guitar signal from a high impedance signal to a strong low impedance signal, and most fuzzes don’t like the buffered signal.

If you use a vintage-style circuit like a Fuzz Face or Tone Bender, put your tuner AFTER the fuzz.  

Vintage and Impedance-Sensitive Fuzzes:

Classic two and three transistor fuzzes need a high-impedance, direct signal straight from your pickups.

These simple circuits sound amazing, but do tend to be finicky about signal.  

A buffered tuner (or any buffered pedal), like a Boss TU-3 tuner, changes the impedance when placed before the fuzz, making the fuzz sound thin, limits the touch sensitivity, and the interferes with clean up when you back off on your guitar's volume knob.

Modern and Buffered-Safe Fuzzes

If you use you use a modern fuzz like a Big Muff, you can put the tuner first. 

Four-transistor or modern op-amp fuzzes care much less about what comes before them, and tend to be comfortable anywhere in the signal chain. 

Also there are modernized versions of classic circuits that either have a buffer built in or have utilized aspects of modern circuits to make them more adaptable to buffers etc- The MXR Classic 108 Fuzz is a great example of this.

Placing a buffered tuner first gives the tuner a pristine signal and lets you mute your signal cleanly before it hits any noisy gain stages.

Volume Pedal First?

If you follow our social media, you probably already know that I LOVE fuzzes.

Many volume pedals (like the EB MVP) have a “tuner out” that takes the tuner out of the signal chain, allowing you to isolate the tuner from your fuzzes but still have it in the old familiar place on the board and having a volume pedal is pretty handy (especially on a Module C). 

I have a Vex Fuzz Factory, a Greer Super Hornet, and a Frost Giant Big Fuzz that live on my main board and this is how I set up my fuzz heavy Holeyboard.