Lovetone Big Cheese

The Lovetone Big Cheese is an analog fuzz pedal produced in England in the mid 1990s, and it is perhaps the most famous pedal the Lovetone company ever made¹². It is built around a multi-stage transistor fuzz circuit with a wide gain range, and its design allows both smooth sustain and aggressive, compressed tones depending on the selected setting¹. What set it apart from most fuzzes of its era was a rotary selector offering four distinct modes, including a gated "Cheese" setting that produces spluttering, dying-amp textures³².

The Big Cheese was only available for a handful of years⁴. That short run is a big part of why so many makers have since built pedals based on its circuit⁴.

How the circuit works

The Big Cheese is a three-transistor silicon fuzz. Aion FX, which has documented the circuit in detail, describes its lineage as a silicon transistor fuzz resembling a Fuzz Face or Tone Bender, followed by diode clipping and a Big Muff-style tone control³. The gated "Cheese" mode comes from intentional misbiasing of the transistor fuzz, an approach Aion FX compares to the Zvex Fuzz Factory or Cornish NG-3³.

Original units variously used either three BC549 or three 2N3904 transistors, so the silicon in any given pedal can differ from unit to unit⁴. The original can also get well above unity gain at max volume, worth knowing if you are running one into a hot amp input³.

For a player, that lineage means the Big Cheese sits somewhere between the classic two-transistor fuzzes of the 1960s and the saturated, tone-shaped sounds of the Big Muff family, with a bias trick on top that no stock Fuzz Face or Tone Bender offers³.

The controls and the four-mode rotary selector

The pedal provides controls for volume, sustain, tone, and a rotary selector for the fuzz modes¹. On the original pedals, the knobs carried playful labels: "Whey," "Hog/Bee," and "Curds"⁶⁷. JHS recounts the original control set in the same dairy terms:

The rotary selector is where the pedal's range lives. Aion FX documents the four positions³:

RockBoard's description of the available modes matches: tighter distortion sounds as well as heavily gated and spluttering fuzz textures¹. In practice, the first three positions shape the EQ of the fuzz, while the fourth changes its character entirely, collapsing the signal into a gated, sputtering texture rather than a sustaining lead tone.

Versions and the original control labels

The Big Cheese was produced in the mid 1990s and was only available for a handful of years before Lovetone ceased production in 2001¹². Beyond the standard version, JHS spoke with Dan Coggins, the designer, about a rare variant:

That refers to a Blackout version, of which only two were ever made². For collectors, the practical takeaway is that nearly every Big Cheese on the used market is the standard version, and the blackout units are effectively unobtainable.

The original knob labels, Whey, Hog/Bee and Curds, were the markings on the original pedals⁷. Later recreations, such as the JHS Cheese Ball, keep the four-mode rotary switch but use conventional labeling⁸.

Who used it

JHS notes that the Big Cheese is on a lot of famous records and lists the guitarists who have used it²:

• Radiohead
• Jeff Tweedy of Wilco
• Pavement
• U2

What an original is worth

Because the pedal was discontinued in 2001, prices come from the used market, and they have been strong. In 2019, Guitar World reported paying "the $649 or so that original offerings command these days"⁹², and MusicRadar the same year described "an original pedal currently commanding around £649"⁵. By June 2020, Guitar Pedal X noted a second-hand example on eBay going for the equivalent of £580, with examples generally fetching in the region of £600 or more⁴. JHS has since put a vintage unit at about a grand⁴.

That cost is exactly the gap the clone market filled. When JHS launched its Cheese Ball at $179 in 2019, Josh Scott framed the price against "about a grand for a vintage Lovetone Big Cheese"⁹⁶.

Pedals based on the Big Cheese

Since Lovetone retired, a number of pedals have copied or adapted the circuit⁴. The best known is the JHS Cheese Ball, but several others draw on the same design.

The JHS Cheese Ball

JHS describes the Cheese Ball as "our faithful and extremely accurate recreation of the original circuit" of an out-of-production 1990s English pedal¹⁰. Josh Scott reverse-engineered it from scratch using three original units; MusicRadar reported the clone was "meticulously replicated" from an original 1995 LoveTone Big Cheese, and that Scott "did it with precise detail" without using online schematics⁵. Gearnews covered the 2019 release as an attempt to clone the original circuit of the popular '90s fuzz¹⁴.

GuitarPlayer's review confirmed that the rotary switch is present and selects between four different modes, just as on the original⁸. Pedal of the Day described it as painstakingly recreated from the original Big Cheese itself⁷.

Other derivatives

ThorpyFX states plainly that its Field Marshal MKII is a MKII version of the Lovetone Big Cheese fuzz¹¹. Gigahearts' MK2 Small Cheese is another derivative, and Guitar Pedal X's reviewer, owning three Big Cheese derivatives including the Cheese Ball and the Field Marshal, called the MK2 Small Cheese "the most expansive / granular of the 3"¹². Valco's KGB Fuzz brings fuzz operation similar to that of a Big Cheese to keys, guitar and bass¹³.

DIY layouts that copy it

The Big Cheese has also become a staple of the DIY fuzz community, with several projects offering the circuit as a printed circuit board or kit¹⁵¹⁶¹⁷.

• Aion FX Monolith: A documented silicon fuzz project based on the Big Cheese circuit, sold as a PCB for $12.50³
• PedalPCB CheeseMonger Fuzz: A PCB project listed for comparison to the Lovetone Big Cheese; PedalPCB notes the product is not licensed, manufactured, or distributed by Lovetone Pedals¹⁵
• General Guitar Gadgets Great Cheddar: A replica of the Big Cheese distortion offered as a DIY project¹⁶

For a builder, these projects make the circuit accessible at a fraction of vintage cost, though none carries Lovetone's blessing. Aion FX's project pages also document the circuit's design in depth, which is where much of the public technical understanding of the pedal comes from³.

Pedals on this page

Lovetone Big Cheese

Lovetone · Distortion

$12.5 list price

ZVEX Fuzz Factory

ZVex · Fuzz

$439 list price

Sola Sound Tone Bender MKI

Sola Sound · Fuzz

Dunlop Fuzz Face

Dunlop · Distortion

$149 list price

Electro-Harmonix Big Muff Pi

Electro-Harmonix · Fuzz

JHS Cheese Ball

JHS Pedals · Fuzz

$179 list price

Questions