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It’s not for nothing that there are so many Fuzz Face-inspired stompboxes on this Earth. Obviously, certain guitar legends made the Fuzz Face a cornerstone of their sound. But star associations aside, the Fuzz Face is a near-perfect stompbox. It’s simple, musical, responsive, and—from a pedal-builder’s perspective—a marvelous blank slate for tinkering and experimentation.

Stomp Under Foot’s Matt Pasquerella knows a thing or two about tweaking classics. His many variations on the Big Muff circuit are renowned among that pedal’s sizable cult. But his take on the silicon Fuzz Face, the Hellephant, suggests he also has the ears (and feel) for what makes a Fuzz Face sound great too. And in my time with the Hellephant, I found it to be a surprisingly expansive-sounding fuzz: as dynamic and singing as a good Fuzz Face, with a touch of extra aggression and range that make it exceptionally flexible.

Like any Fuzz Face-inspired pedal worth a hill of beans, the Hellephant is dead simple—just a volume knob and a fuzz control. There’s not much more to see if you crack open the back cover, either. The whole of the clean and ordered circuit is wired on a board not much bigger than a couple of postage stamps, and you can clearly see the spindly, NOS metal-can 2N222A transistors at the heart of the works. About the only component on the board that would look out of place in a vintage Fuzz Face is the voltage bias trim pot, which you can use to shape the gain and voice of the pedal.

If there’s any complaint that players commonly level against the Fuzz Face, it’s that, while it’s very responsive to changes in guitar volume, there’s often not a lot of range in the pedal’s control themselves. In fact, many vintage Fuzz Face players keep both controls at or near maximum and let their guitar volume do the rest of the work. The Hellephant, however, breaks from that mold to a significant degree—offering much more control without sacrificing any sensitivity to guitar volume or tone attenuation.

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