Buzzing Bugs Bolster review – is this the ultimate dual fuzz pedal?
£179, buzzingbugsfx.com
If you name a fuzz pedal after an evil scary giant, it’d better be pretty frickin’ fearsome. To that end, the Buzzing Bugs Bolster has been designed with a scorching high-gain circuit on one side… and an even more scorching one on the other.
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The giant in question is a figure of Cornish legend – and that’s no coincidence, because the UK’s southernmost county is where this smart-looking pedal is made. But while the original Bolster apparently terrorised villages, ate children and was very inconsiderate to his wife, this one only wants to spook your eardrums.
Image: Richard Purvis
What is it?
I spent a good half-hour noodling away with the Bolster before I realised something quite important: the ‘more’ side isn’t just an extra dose of gain to add to the main business on the right, but a whole separate fuzz circuit in itself. So this is a classic double stomper, offering instant access to two individual sounds plus an apocalyptic ‘both’ option.
The right-hand fuzz is a silicon transistor type, with controls for gain, tone, output level, volts (for bias-tampering effects) and shift (for thinning out the bass at the input stage). The left channel skips all of that and keeps things simple with a single level knob for its extra-feisty op-amp fuzz. This could get brutal.
Image: Richard Purvis
Sounds
“Could get brutal”? It starts brutal! The right-hand channel is up first, and it’s a blast. Keep the volts knob set at noon for normal biasing, and what comes out is the very nicest kind of thick, smooth, aggressive fuzz, with a good balance between body and clarity.
If you want to change that balance, you have two options. Turning down the shift knob brings a leaner, more focused sound – a great match for humbuckers that are at risk of succumbing to flub – while the standard tone control turns out to be… well, not exactly standard. Crank it up and, rather than opening up the very highest frequencies, it gives a boost in the bitey upper-mids zone. Neither of these knobs will dramatically transform the tone of the Bolster, but between the two of them you’ve got an awful lot of tweaking power.
The one-knob fuzz isn’t entirely different in character but feels more open, with a distinctly mids-scooped voicing. On its own it sounds properly gigantic… and when you use both sides together, it somehow gets even bigger in a way that can make it difficult to persuade yourself to stop playing.
What’s really cool about ‘both on’ mode, though, is what it does to the volts knob. Without the left circuit engaged, pushing this in either direction brings familiar results: things become increasingly jerky and spluttery as the signal-killing gate effect gets more and more strict. But with both LEDs ablaze you get a softer, more forgiving kind of gating on the clockwise half of the dial – and, at maximum, a pinched buzzing effect that’s somewhere between a Zvex Fuzz Factory in velcro mode and an analogue synth. It’s fiendishly cool, and Bolster the Cornish giant would surely approve.
Image: Richard Purvis
Should I buy one?
There’s no such thing as a single fuzz pedal that can do it all, but if I had to pick one for an open-ended residency on a desert island then the Buzzing Bugs Bolster might well be it.
As a single pedal, the right half is superb – a classic high-gain dirt machine with elements of Big Muff, Tone Bender and Fuzz Face. When you then add in the smart tone controls and the biasing tricks, and pair all of that with a second circuit that’s even more potent, it becomes something really quite special.
Image: Richard Purvis
Alternatives
Not many people would be daft enough to put two separate high-gain fuzzes in one box, but there are plenty of one-channel options with a second footswitch that unlocks an extra level of rage. These include the Great Eastern FX Co. Focus Fuzz Deluxe (£299/$349), the Silktone Fuzz+ ($269/£279) and the ThorpyFX Field Marshal (£219/$269).
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Source: www.guitar-bass.net
