Fulltone 70

‘70

Vintage Fuzzface pedals are a favorite of many artists from the ‘60’s, ‘70’s, and beyond, used most notably by one James Marshall “Jimi” Hendrix to get a staggering array of clean and bombastic sounds...all depending on where the guitar’s volume knob was set.

There were basically two versions of the Fuzzface: the earlier “Arbiter” Fuzzface (with Germanium NKT275 transistors) and the later “Dallas Arbiter” Fuzzface. (with silicon BC183L and BC108-C transistors).

The nastier, more distorted, BC108-C Fuzzface came out around 1970, and it inspired both the circuit and the name of your new Fulltone 70 pedal. In my 20’s, Fulltone spent much of their time scouring the country finding these old vintage effects that nobody seemed to want.

Many of them were broken, some sounded like God, and some sounded like crap. They couldn't believe people would pay $1000 for an original Fuzzface when the sound consistency was so hit-or-miss, so they started learning exactly what made the occasional one “magical.”

This eventually led to the birth of Fulltone: vintage style tones with more flexibility, more reliability, better quality, true bypass switching with LED status, a DC power outlet, and at a price that was as much as 1/10th that of the original.

The 70 pedal was the 3rd or 4th release from Fulltone, debuting in 1994 and was the quintessential version of a 1970-1973 silicon transistor "vintage Fuzzface clone.” For some reason I designed the 70 into a ridiculously large enclosure considering how simple the circuit is, but it was a fairly popular pedal in my line, considering most people don’t know how to use fuzzes.

The 70 sold around 4400 units during the next 15 years, using various transistors including BC183L, ECG199, 2SC828, and (my favorite) the BC108-C. At some point early along the way Fulltone added the "Mid" knob which, for the first time, allowed a silicon Fuzzface-style pedal to cut through the mix...along with the internal Bias trimmer to allow the user to get softer or harder-edged tones.

Recently they found a huge stash of my favorite Silicon transistors for this circuit, the BC-108C, so they reintroduced the 70 in a smaller enclosure, with our proprietary "anti-pop" quiet switching circuit, better power supply filtering for less noise, and polarity protection to keep you from frying the Transistors.

...that’s the magic of fuzz!

• Fuzz pedal
• quintessential version of a 1970-1973 silicon transistor "vintage Fuzzface clone
• BC108C Silicon transistors
• Lots of sustain, distortion and midrange
• Mid control for cutting through the mix
• Internal Bias trimmer for softer and harder-edged tones
• True Bypass via Fulltone's 3PDT footswitch
• 100% hand-built in the USA
• Powered by 9 V DC PSU
(centre -, 2.1 mm, ~5 mA current draw)