The Foxx - Octave Fuzz kit

French first / English below

Bonne fuzz / octave up. Montage très simple, quoi que le PCB est peut être un peu étroit, certains condensateurs nont pas leur place au plus proche du circuit. Je lai pour ma part monté dans une boite type BB pour avoir de la place. Ça rentre dans une boite 125B si on est un peu organisé ;)

Le son de fuzz est plutôt moderne à mon gout. Je trouve les potards peu réactif. Il faut pousser le volume assez loin pour avoir léquilibre dry/wet, et si le sustain est au mini, peu de volume ressort de la fuzz. Le tone est efficace. On tombe vite dans un gain important et la pédale sonne fort ! Loctave est quand à elle monophonique suivant les zones de jeu. Des power chords assez grave sonneront très bien, mais des accords assez aiguës sonneront... il faut lentendre pour comprendre, mais on est au delà du décrochage dune whammy ! En solo, Jack White vient épauler le son ! Il faut noter que moins le sustain est élevé, moins loctave sera présente.

En résumé, je note 4 étoiles pour la taille du PCB qui rend la fermeture de la pédale difficile une fois les composants soudés et linteraction entre les différents potards. La Foxx reste quoi quil en soit une excellente Octave Fuzz. :)



This is a really good fuzz / octave up. Soldering the components is easy but the PCB is a bit small. Some capacitors are above the other components and it can be an issue to close the box. I put the circuitery in a BB type box, but it can fit with a 125B box with a bit of organisation.

I think the sound is a modern fuzz sound. Potentiometers are not really reactive. The volume knob must be really high to have an clean and a dirty sound balanced. If the sutain pot is as low as possible, general volume will be a bit low. The tone is really effective. The gain of the fuzz is quickely high and the pedal can be really loud ! The octave is monophonic, but it will sound differently according to the playing zone on the neck. Low power chords will sound very well with the octave, but high-pitched chords will be awful. This is worse than an old whammy pedal played in chords. In solos, this is like Jack White come and play with you. Its important to notice that the octaves presence is related to the sustain level : More gain, more octave.

To recap, I put 4 stars because of the PCB size and the interactions between sustain and volume controls. Despite thoose points, The Foxx is a really good pedal ! :)

Brice P., 11.07.2016

Sounds good and the build is quite easy. Is it me or the octave switch doesnt seem to do nothing? The octave is always on...

Mattia F., 01.07.2021

Very true to the original. Aggressive and scooped in the mids.

Some octave fuzzes have too much gain, this one can be dialed down to taste. Obviously the octave loses strength then. The Tone knob offers a very wide range of sounds.

It can be used with the octave on for a monster fuzz with lots of bass and scooped mids. The latter are less desirable for me but YMMV.
With the octave on it cuts through like a razorblade.

The build was quite difficult for me. Populating the OCB is easy enough, although some of the box capacitors are big and they ended up slanted.
The problem was all the offboard wiring. All the pots, switches and jacks are wired separately and theres no PCB for the footswitch. Wiring up a 3PDT for true bypass is always a chore.
The 125B enclosure is very tight, I had to cram the PCB in and theres no space for a 9V battery.
Luckily it all worked out the first time around.

Suggestions for the next revision: use a larger enclosure, PCB-mounted pots, replace the toggle switch with a footswitch+LED and maybe add a toggle switch to add mids, I believe this can be accomplished by swapping some capacitors. Basically turn it into a Danelectro 3699 :)

I learned a lot with this build!

Andrea A., 03.07.2021