Bearfoot FX Pink Purple Fuzz

The Bearfoot FX Pink Purple Fuzz is a compact fuzz pedal that sits somewhere between the usual categories: the circuit-analysis site Guitar FX Layouts described it as "fuzz, overdrive, or distortion... It's all three, depending on how you dial it in."¹ Vintage Guitar magazine's news item on the pedal listed its controls as Volume, Fuzz, and a non-standard EQ knob.²

What it does

Bearfoot FX's Pink Purple is a high-gain fuzz with an unusual twist: a mid-EQ knob in place of the tone control most fuzzes carry. Guitar FX Layouts called it "a versatile mid-EQ knob that takes you through a range of useful fuzztones."¹ The same analysis described the pedal as "very high gain, while remaining very low-noise, housing all your daily fuzztones (no crazy octaves or" gated fuzz, meaning it aims at everyday fuzz sounds rather than octave or gated extremes.¹

The controls, as reported:

The circuit

Guitar FX Layouts, which published a stripboard (vero) layout of the pedal drawn by mmolteratx in August 2013, described the topology as "just 3 cascading gain stages like we have seen before, with a Big Muff type fuzz control" and a tone control of the Nature type often seen in BJFE designs.¹ The three stages use different transistor types: Q1 is a JFET, Q2 a silicon BJT, and Q3 a germanium stage, which the site said "will make a difference to things we've seen before with common transistors."¹

For builders, the published layout is described as fitting a 1590A enclosure.¹ A discussion on the same page noted the Nature control uses a W-taper 20k pot, where other Nature controls had used linear taper, with linear suggested as a substitute.¹

For more on this corner of the pedal world, see the site's pages on Fuzz Pedals, Overdrive Pedals and Distortion Pedals.

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