Aion Electronics Flare Quick Start Manual

Aion Electronics Flare Quick Start Manual Manual pdf 1 page image

1FUZZ FACTORY / FLARE FUZZFlareFuzz FactoryFuzz Factory Project LinkOverviewThe Flare is a clone of the ZVEX Fuzz Factory, a really interestinglittle box that lets you create everything from a really thick butmusical fuzz to some messed-up oscillations. The Fuzz Factoryis essentially a classic Fuzz Face with a LPB-1 booster in front ofit, but with the twist that it uses PNP transistors running on +9Vrather than -9V like a standard Fuzz Face.This is not a user-friendly pedal by any means—the knobs arevery interactive, and there are a lot of settings that don’t work, butif you start with some default knob settings you can get a goodfeel for what it’s capable of.The Fuzz Factory is notable for being custom-built directly intothe guitars of Matthew Bellamy of Muse. He uses it for his maindrive tone as well as for feedback & oscillation purposes.Controls & Usage• Drive controls the amount of fuzz, equivalent to an overdrive’s gain control. This also turns intosomething of a feedback pitch control when the Stability is reduced.• Level is the output level of the effect.• Comp changes the attack. It is heavily affected by the Stability control.• Stability reduces the +9V supply to change the bias of the whole circuit, changing the overall characterof all of the knobs and throwing it into oscillation.• Gate turns off the transistor when the signal is below the threshold. Useful for creating glitchy sounds.• Soft reduces the gain of the first boost stage, which rounds out the fuzz a bit and gives it more of anoverdrive character.• Tone is a classic SWTC (Stupidly Wonderful Tone Control) appended to the end of the circuit to allow thetreble content to be tamed a bit.• Body is an input capacitor blend that fades between a 100n and 10uF capacitor. This increases the bassand thickens up the effect.ModificationsThe three additional knobs can all be bypassed if you want to just build a classic Fuzz Factory.• Body can be left off without using any jumpers; just include C2 but not C8.• Soft can be omitted by using a 220k resistor for R7 and jumpering pads 2 and 3 which are marked“BYPASS” on the back side of the PCB.• Tone can be bypassed by running a jumper between pads 1 and 3 marked “BYPASS” on the back.Leave off C6.