Wattson Classic Fuzz FY-2

Creating a fuzz tone basically involves slicing off the peaks of the signal, something which engineers call "clipping". In it's simplest form, a fuzz circuit would make the clean sine wave signal from your guitar look like a square wave, but most fuzz circuits go beyond merely clipping the signal, and perform some other fancy waveshaping as well. But, the heart of any fuzz is the circuit that clips the signal.

So, what is the best way to clip a signal? Well, there have been two schools of thought on this. The first was to use back-to-back diodes. After that, the debate ensues about whether to use germanium, silicon, or even LED's. The Wattson Classic Fuzz FY-6 is a prime example of a germanium diode fuzz, with additional waveshaping on steroids!

The other approach to clip a signal is to drive a transistor into saturation. The Shin-ei FY-2 is a classic example of a simple fuzz circuit that uses two overdriven transistors to clip the signal. It then provides a balance control to blend the output of the two clipping stages, and then filters the result to get a warm and heavy fuzz tone.

The Wattson Classic Fuzz FY-2 is a tone-accurate reproduction of the original Shin-ei FY-2. As always, we go above and beyond by building the Wattson FY-2 into a rugged 16 gauge steel chassis, and we've added a few modern touches like a 9V DC power jack, and a convenient battery drawer. We've even upgraded the rear legend plate, replacing the original brushed aluminum 'sticker' with a 20 gauge stainless steel plate.

The original FY-2 had a severe volume drop when the effect circuit was engaged. We resolved this by adding a clean boost stage after the fuzz circuit. We also added a switch to the internal circuit board so that the boost stage could be bypassed, for those who might be replacing a vintage Shin-ei FY-2 on their gigging pedal board. We ship the pedal with the boost enabled, since this is how most people will prefer to use it.

The Wattson Classic Fuzz FY-2 is covered by our one-year warranty.