Jamming the Grind Fuzz into gear

Heavy Electronics offers up tons of fuzz for the tweaking

Heavy Electronics was an early adopter to WTDP? We always got the feeling that some builders, especially smaller ones, were skeptical about us in the beginning… thinking perhaps that we just set up the site as some sort of ‘gear grab’ that would collect their boutique beauties ‘for review’… then vanish into the ether. We never got that vibe from Sayer. He was willing to help from the very beginning. So why did it take so long for us to get a Heavy pedal in-house to review!? Good question! Some sidesteps and just life in general had always kept it from happening… until now! We’ve got a Grind Fuzz to dissect – a fuzz/overdrive hybrid that promises good range, but can it deliver?

The Grind Fuzz comes in the white pedal box adorned with a gold foil Heavy Electronics logo sticker (an ‘H’ with wings). Inside is the pedal itself and another logo sticker that you can place where you please. The Grind Fuzz is a fairly straight-forward two knob fuzz – Level, which adjusts the volume and Gain, which introduces the fuzz levels to the signal. A toggle switch dubbed Swell adds high-end gain and harmonics and becomes dynamic-compressive at high gain. At full gain, the effect can often sound like a slowly moving EQ (dark to bright) triggered each time you strike the strings. There is however, another control – a side-exposed pot that can be adjusted with a pick to drop voltage and sag the entire circuit itself. In the company’s words, subtle use of the side pot can result in light compression of the treble side of the fuzz. To the extreme, the pedal can become almost gated and unpredictable.

With the Strat, bridge pick-up first, we dive into the Grind Fuzz and dial up a meaty growl. Point of note… like a lot of modern pedals we’ve come across, the Grind Fuzz is loud. Running the PRRI at our normal levels we had a ton of push coming from the pedal. With the Level at 9 o’clock and the gain at noon, here is the Grind Fuzz. Clean first, then engaged.

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The Grind Fuzz thickens up the bridge pick-up on the Strat nicely with a hint of buzz and respectable low end. Switching up the neck pick-up, we pull the gain back for a little bluesy interlude. With the Level still around 9 o’clock and the Gain about 9 as well, here is the Grind Fuzz again… clean, then mean.

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It doesn’t take much rotation on the Gain knob for the Grind Fuzz to nasty-up single coils… which could be good or bad depending on your particular tonal taste. Over to the Les Paul, we open up the Grind Fuzz a bit. Level around 9 o’clock, but the Gain now dimed, here is the pedal pushing the humbuckers of the old LP. Clean first… then the fuzz.

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Heavy Electronics Grind Fuzz is a cool fuzz box that is more versatile than it would appear at first glance. It can do tasteful, lower gain fuzz tones good for blues chords… the wall of fuzz drone for the noise merchant set… and with the side-mounted trim pot, it can color dying battery tones into whatever setting you’d like. We would have liked to have had full knob control option on the side pot. As it is now, the pot resembles a large screw top that the user can turn using a pick or coin. With plenty of headroom and gain on tap, the Grind Fuzz isn’t for the bedroom or the faint of heart, but if you are looking for a hybrid fuzz that can cover a range seemingly beyond its controls you might want to give the Grind Fuzz a look-see. That’s our opinion anyway… your mileage may vary.

PLEASE NOTE: All YMMV Review clips are played through a Fender ’65 Princeton Reverb RI using Lava Clear Connect cables. No reverb or other effects were added to the clips. Guitars used in this review include a 1979 Gibson Les Paul Custom and a 1998 Fender American Deluxe Stratocaster.