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Interview Roger Mayer

Greetings, fuzz freaks! Welcome back to Stomp School. We have a real treat for you this month: an interview with legendary effects pioneer, Roger Mayer. I was recently sorting through some old files and found interview material I had left over after writing Analog Man’s Guide to Vintage Effects. Among the discoveries was part of a conversation I had with Roger Mayer in 2003. As many of you know, Roger invented the Octavia and was the personal gear guru for Jimi Hendrix. Here’s an excerpt from our conversation in which Roger and I discuss transistors and the original Fuzz Face.

What do you think is the most essential element of a fuzz pedal?

Mayer: There isn’t one element. I mean, obviously, the overall sound. But that’s not an element, that’s a result of the element. There are many different ways to create the sound, and so many interactive things in the pedal. You can’t really say there’s one thing.

So it’s how they all interact with each other?

Absolutely! In the old days, the thing with the germanium transistors was the huge spread of each transistor. You couldn’t take a hundred out of a box and use the same components for each one.

Because they were inconsistent?

Yes.

The gains would be all over the place, I guess.

Oh, all over the place. The leakage is all over the place. Are you familiar with the way transistors are made? Basically, the transistors are going to use a silicon or germanium wafer, and it goes through a bunch of processesâ€â€

Det här var det intressantaste:

<i>We used to get around this in the studio by putting different buffers in front of the pedal. A Fuzz Face does not particularly like looking at the coil of a guitar where the output impedance is rising continuously, or it may squeal when it looks at a wah-wah pedal."]

Och så sägs det att man absolut inte ska ha en buffer framför en fuzz... [:)]

Erik R

Mayer borde veta, även om jag tycker att han ofta "tar i" i intervjuer.

Wow! Det finns ju inget bra eller dåligt ljud objektivt sett utan alla får ju tycka vad dom vill. Det finns miljoner olika myter som snurrar omkring angående varför vissa saker låter bättre/sämre när det gäller gitarrsounds. Mycket är försäljningsknep och "mojo". Men är det EN sak jag verkligen tycker angående gitarrljud och effekter och pedaler och sådant så är det detta:

En gammaldags fuzzface-krets - germanium eller kisel - låter skit med en buffer framför. En buffer dödar anslagskänsligheten och tar fram den värsta skrik-diskanten i soundet.

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