Meet the mad kitty – an original, high-gain fuzz design with distortion overtones.

Last year, I tasked my daughter with a pedal design for a fuzz. This grumpy cat, burned orange enclosure, and hot pink knobs is a result of her artistry, which is a departure from my usual artwork created exclusively by Madlizzyindustries. I am releasing this new pedal on the actual 15th birthday of my daughter Ester.

This circuit starts with a powerful pre-amp stage fed into the fuzzing part consisting of a carefully selected pair of complementary, vintage silicon ‘big can’ transistors. To ensure above unity output level even with the most modest gan settins, a powerful post-gain amp stage is placed before the output.

The fuzz contains five controls. CHOKE regulates the amount of input signal. This is siilar to your guitar volume, but offers more control as a preset of your fuzz response. BOOST and LEVEL are self-explanatory. MOOD knob is a Big Muff-style tone control. A user-adjustable internal pot can change the taper response to a more linear response, if desired. In addition, a mode switch will tame some of the harsh presence that occurs in some amps without having to change the fuzz character. Normal mode is indicated in green, while the presence mode lights up the LED ring in red.

Experiment with a combination of settings to achieve a wide variety of overdriven fuzzy tones or distortion-like sounds!

This version accepts a battery (not included) as well as a standard center negative 9V pedal power supply. To preserve the battery when the pedal is not on use, unplug the input cable. Plugging in a power supply will automatically disconnect the battery even if the input is plugged in.

The pedal is true bypass.