KMA Audio Machines Fuzzly Bear

The Fuzzly Bear is a fuzz pedal from KMA Audio Machines, a Berlin-based builder whose first production pedal, released in 2013, was inspired by the Jordan Bosstone, an old, obscure and highly underrated fuzz box¹. The circuit is silicon-transistor based², and the maker describes its tones as ranging from a sizzling and chunky overdriven tone to a furry wall of fuzz¹. The current version, the Fuzzly Bear 2, arrived in April 2022 with relay-based silent switching and improved electronics¹.

A '60s-style silicon fuzz

The Fuzzly Bear sits in the silicon fuzz camp rather than the germanium one. In a 2019 guitar.com interview, KMA's Enrico Preuss described it as "a silicon-transistor-based pedal"². The maker's own product page calls it an analog silicon fuzz¹, and Gearnews reviewer Jef found it "certainly has that '60s style silicon fuzz thing going on"⁴.

What that means for a player is a fuzz voice that the maker says runs from a dirty, chunky overdriven tone with the gain backed off to a full furry wall of fuzz with it up¹. Guitar World's Jonathan Horsley described the gain knob's sweep as thickening as you turn it, "amassing quite the pelt by the end of the knob's travel," and called the dimed setting "perfect for classic tunes of yesteryear"⁵.

The original pedal, the Fuzzly Bear Silicium Fuzz, was reviewed by Pedal of the Day in 2015, where Mike B wrote that the builders "built a take on the Bosstone, aiming to get that classic sound with some modern twists," and concluded "I'd say they succeeded"⁶.

The controls

The Fuzzly Bear keeps its control set simple: three knobs.

The gain knob is the shape control. KMA says that set fully clockwise, "the pedal's smooth, warm and cosy decay turns into a starved and gated fuzz sound that almost gives a ghost octave, pseudo trumpety kinda vibe"¹.

Skin/Meat is the bias control, and it is the knob that defines the pedal. Delicious Audio describes how it "adjusts the bias of the circuit, from a sharp drive tone to a thick and meaty wall of fuzzy fur"⁷. Pedal of the Day's Mike B called it "the true star of this pedal," saying it "goes from a sharper, finer, SKIN-ier fuzz sound to a big, fat, thick, MEAT-y tone in a flash"⁶.

A refined Bosstone circuit

The Fuzzly Bear's lineage runs back to the Jordan Bosstone, a 1970s fuzz box that General Guitar Gadgets describes as a classic worth cloning⁸. KMA's starting point, as Preuss told guitar.com, "was marked by building a Jordan Boss Tone clone with a bias control and a wider frequency range"².

The refinements matter because the original Bosstone circuit had a known weakness. Guitar World reports that KMA added "a bias control and a gussied up circuit that gave it a much improved low end" compared with the Jordan Boss Tone⁵. MusicRadar puts it the same way: the Fuzzly Bear "added bias control and solved the circuit riddle of the original's weak low-end response"⁹. KMA's own description, quoted on the Guitar FX Layouts blog, says the company "brought back the low end" and refined the circuit "to get an old school sound with a modern Twist"³.

The Fuzzly Bear 2 of 2022 updated the original rather than changing its character. Gearnews notes that "this new, version two of the pedal, updates and enhances the original"⁴, with the maker adding relay-based silent switching and improved electronics¹.

For builders and bass players

The Fuzzly Bear circuit has a life beyond the retail pedal, because the Guitar FX Layouts blog published a veroboard layout of it that DIY builders have worked with for years. The comment threads there record some practical findings:

• Q2 must be a PNP transistor; a 2N2222A is NPN and will not work, and a 2N2907A is suggested instead³
• Flipping Q2 180 degrees, so its pins read E B C top to bottom instead of C B E, makes the build sound like the demos³
• A BC107B, BC107C or BC108 works as a silicon replacement for Q1 with good tone³
• For bass, one builder replaced Q1 with a BC107 and found it gave a more useful tone with active basses³
• The original KMA board has a slot for an optional capacitor for taming high treble³

One commenter on that thread was blunt about their own taste: "It work fine but I did not like it on guitar. Sorry. Maybe, i was looking for fuzz face sound"³. That is a useful reminder that the Fuzzly Bear is a Bosstone-voiced fuzz, not a Fuzz Face, and players chasing that other classic circuit may want to look elsewhere.

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