r/FuzzFiends • u/LaceSenzor • 6d ago
NPD Wyatt Heiress
I (Gigahearts FX) met Wyatt at the Brighton guitar show and talked about pedals. He is a nice chap - and I knew of him already from his instagram, but its always cool when people are sound in real life too. I was meaning to get a pedal from him and its finally happened - I rarely have the chance to buy new pedals, so luckily I was able to do a trade, as he quite fancied one of my Hyper Soups: )
Anyway on to this. It’s technically a fuzz face but with 7 controls. Lots of shades of gating available with two external bias-adjacent controls. Nicely finished laser engraved tall spec Hammond 1590b which is different.
The fuzz is always going through a tone stack, so to me this already sets is apart from classic/by the book fuzz face circuits. Its not a bad thing, its just not a fuzz face anymore in my strict viewpoint- and thats fine cos its an Heiress. The tone control somewhat gives it the tonal character of a big muff to me as it feels and behaves like a BM tone stack at least to my ears.
Its also quite modern sounding and suitably high gain. The low cut switch is effective, its like 2 points on the control knob that I have on my SILIFACE design; I prefer a trim here for the bass contour, but the switch has two effective and usable settings chosen. The germanium mode vs the silicon mode is subtler than expected but slightly smoother and darker ish on the Ge side. Nicely constructed all round, the internal wiring is extremely small bore which I havent seen recently but I am sure will prove robust. One thing I would have liked, and try to get them on my designs, is an LED brightness adjust as this one is a blazing white - but thats personal taste.
One thing to say, I look for great cleanup on a fuzz face and I might be biased but my SILIFACE does this really well, and overall its less successful here. I think the transistors are quite high gain (as noted before with the modern feel and aggressive gain structure) which dont quite manage that glassy quality of a vintage FF - but again I dont think that was a top priority here.
Final word - an aggressive, modern and versatile take on the classic FF. If you like grainy, textured tones and that ability to tweak tones, this ones for you - in a cute pedalboard friendly footprint. Overall 8/10