Any Kemper Fuzz presets close to the ZVex Fuzz Factory?

  • The Fuzz Factory is in essence a heavily modded and circuit-bent Fuzz Face.

    Depending on the sound you are after, the Kemper Fuzz can get there, but since the Fuzz Factory is capable of so many different colours of lovely mayhem, you'll have to be a bit more specific ;)

  • Before I got my Kemper (many year ago now!) I used to build lots of pedals - the schematics are out there for many of the common fuzz pedals and stomp boxes.


    Like Don says, the Fuzz Factory is a modified fuzz face. There's a gain knob and a volume knob (like on most fuzz) but the other three? One actually cut down the battery voltage. The others (if I recall correctly) were altering the bias on the circuit which leads to instability. These modifications that make it interesting (or annoying, depending on your world view) take it beyond the realms of a circuit that performs as it should because you're intentionally making it unstable / not in its sweet spot. So you can get it to oscillate and do ooooooeeeeooooschwweeee stuff without hitting anything on the guitar at all. That's the sound of 'Plug In Baby' intro. Can also get it to do interesting spitty / crackly stuff. If you like that kind of thing :)


    I'm not convinced you can get a preset to do this within the Kemper Fuzz as it stands now - happy to be put right on that if someone manages but...... The parameters you can tweak all seem to be designed to wring the maximum variety of fuzz tones (crazy / not so crazy / harsh / soft) *whilst not going into instability* because none of the parameters allow it to do so. It would be nice if parameters could be added in future that allow some of the spitty, unstable fuzz tones. But if not, I'll live.... when they released it, it for sure surpassed my hopes for what could be done with this effect.

  • No worries - glad it helped :)


    If you want to explore the world of making your own pedals, Madbean pedals is a great resource to Google. As well as selling drilled and etched boards (so you can easily solder components in) he has schematics there for lots of different pedals. Doesn’t look like he sells the fuzz factory clone board any more but it’s in the archives there as the Zombii.

    My favourite fuzz pedals I made from them were a D.A.M. Meathead and a Sun King (which is a very specific Classic fuzz face with a tweak and mojo transistors). I don’t have the commercial versions of any of any of these to a/b my home brew ones with but I enjoyed the results. Also made a Klon, phaser, octaver etc.


    For my particular tastes, the fuzz section in the Kemper does what I want to an excellent standard so I rarely plug in the home brew pedals. The sun king, due to its design, gets interesting by turning the guitar volume down a little (as do many fuzz pedals). I believe the Kemper Stage will go there with its virtual impedance thing going on (which my toaster doesn’t have). So that’s a downside but the Kemper fuzz is a heck of a lot quieter….. That benefit (for me) evens out against the impedance thing but that’s a very personal decision for users depending how they like things to react :)