Reuss Musical FZ05 Purple Faze User Manual
- June 10, 2024
- Reuss Musical
Table of Contents
Reuss Musical FZ05 Purple Faze
Introduction
Super great and warm sounding true 1960s germanium ‘face’ fuzz circuit, built with NPN germanium transistors for the convenience of modern power polarity. Modern output section added to preserve the vintage sound and keep it loud, lossless and consistent
- Mechanical true bypass switching (non-buffered)
- Runs on a standard ’Boss-style’ 9V DC ‘negative centre’ guitar pedal power supply or a 9V battery.
- Power consumption 7 mA
Battery access
- Remove the four screws at the bottom side of the pedal with a philips head screwdriver to remove the bottom plate and gain access to the battery
Warranty
- All Reuss pedals comes with a limited 24 months warranty against manufacturing faults
- The warranty is not covering normal wear and tear or abuse
Controls
- LEVEL’ sets the output level of the effect sound
- ‘INTENSITY’ sets the amount of fuzz. The circuit of the pedal interacts very well with your guitar’s volume control, allowing you to reduce the fuzz intensity by rolling down you guitar’s volume.
Footswitch
- Switches the effect on and off, indicated by the orange LED (mechanical true bypass)
Connectors
- Right side jack is the input of the pedal. Connect your instrument here
- Left side jack is the output. Connect your amp here
- The 9V DC sits at the right side of the pedal. This is for a standard guitar pedal ‘negative centre’-type jack. ONLY use this type. Reversing the polarity can damage the pedal. The pedal can also run on a 9V battery (not included). The DC jack has a highly advanced,
Reuss designed, power supply noise filtering circuit attached at a mini-PCB, which makes the Purple Faze tolerant to most power supplies, even cheap and noisy ‘Switch Mode’ units.
Please note: The unit is drawing power from the battery, when there is a jack in the input connector. Alway remove the input jack when the pedal is not in use, if you are running it with a battery
Also please note: Being a vintage circuit, the fuzz wants to see a high impedance input signal to sound correct. Any low impedance signal from a buffered bypass pedal (like a Boss or Ibanez or similar type) will make the fuzz sound wrong. It will loose punch and fullness and sound thin and fizzy. Not as intended. Always put a vintage fuzz-circuit (tone benders, fuzz faces etc.) first in your chain
Specifications
- Vintage 1960s ‘face’ fuzz schematic built with ultra-rare vintage new old stock 1960s OC140 germanium transistors. Each set of two transistors are carefully matched and tested by ear by Anders Marcuslund-Reuss.
- Recovery gain stage added to the output of the vintage circuit for extra loudness. The vintage fuzz face circuit has a weak output by modern standards. With the Purple Faze you can easily push a tube amp into break-up for some very tasty sounds.
- Output buffer added to the vintage circuit for a consistent, high quality modern output signal without tone-loss. Vintage pedals has the level pot wired directly to the output jack which makes the impedance fluctuate with level adjustments, which is a poor and incomplete design by modern standards. This upgrade does not compromise the original tone, but preserves it and presents it at its best.
- The transistors are ‘NPN’ which makes the pedal run on modern, pedalboard friendly ‘negative ground’ power polarity without addition charge pump circuitry (contrary to vintage original pedals and most modern PNP recreations which features positive ground / reverse polarity – or the charge pump circuit)
- Extremely high build quality. Completely handmade in the European Union
- Vintage-style ’through hole’ construction (except the power supply filtering circuit which is miniature parts)
- Compact aluminium enclosure with purple sparkle powder coat finish and real silk screen printed graphics
- High quality Neutrik jacks
- Upgrade quality footswitch (good for at least 30000 stomps)
Circuit and design copyright 2022
Reuss Musical Instruments / Good Guy’s Media & Music
DK-2860 Søborg, Denmark