Z.Vex Fuzz Factory

The Z.Vex Fuzz Factory is a fuzz box made by the American inventor and musician Zachary Vex of the Z.Vex Effects company.

The Fuzz Factory is based on, yet vastly expands the tonal palette of, classic fuzztone designs from the 1960s. Invented in the mid-1990s, the pedals are mostly handbuilt and painted in Minnesota, United States, with a budget line being manufactured in Taiwan.

Overview

The basis for the Fuzz Factory is a traditional fuzz effect circuit using New old stock Germanium Transistors, as used on the Fuzz Face, the seminal device used by Jimi Hendrix and many others during the late 1960s/early 1970s. The Fuzz Factory innovates by use of internal feedback loops and component-level bias adjustments to achieve unprecedented control, or deliberate lack thereof, of the distorted signal. Designed by electronic trial-and-error, closely tied to circuit bending, the controls of the Fuzz Factory are highly interactive, and represent a wide spectrum of tonal ability, often extending into self-oscillation and noise. Many musicians find the promise of near-infinite new sounds and textures inherent to the device to be inspiring to their music, and the Fuzz Factory has a well-known following among professional guitarists.