Catalinbread CB Fuzz

The Catalinbread CB Fuzz is a fuzz pedal from the Portland-based maker, part of its CB series. It takes a deliberately simple approach: the gain is effectively fixed at a hot, high level, and the single knob is a master output control. That, as Premier Guitar's reviewer put it, "takes some of the guesswork out of fuzz crafting," since there is no bias or gain staging to dial in. It carried a list price of $150 at the time of the review.¹

How it sounds and how it is built

The CB Fuzz uses silicon rather than germanium transistors. Premier Guitar's reviewer noted that this reduces its sensitivity to volume dynamics, a common trade-off against the touchier germanium designs. In tone terms, the reviewer found the pedal "has a lot in common with a silicon Fuzzrite," adding that he "wouldn't be surprised if it shared DNA" with Catalinbread's own Fuzzrite, another silicon design in the company's range.¹

The character the reviewer described is on the aggressive side but usable in a band mix¹:

Using it

With one knob, setup is mostly about finding unity gain, the setting where the pedal's output level matches your clean tone¹:

• With humbuckers, the reviewer found unity gain right around the 11-o'clock-to-noon mark on the output knob.
• Single-coil pickups tend to need a little more from the pedal to reach the same point.¹

One behavior worth knowing before you buy into the design: at lower guitar volumes, the overdrive tones the pedal produces are typically colored by what the reviewer called a "snorkely midrange emphasis." Players who clean a fuzz up by rolling back the guitar's volume should hear that as a description of what to expect.¹

Where it sits in Catalinbread's fuzz range

Catalinbread has long made fuzz a specialty, from the octave-up Octapussy² to the Fuzzrite-inspired designs and beyond. The CB Fuzz is the fixed-gain, one-knob entry in that lineup: where the Fuzzrite and its variants give the player more controls to shape the circuit, the CB Fuzz fixes the gain and asks only for an output level. For more on the wider category, see the Fuzz Pedals page.

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