How Good Fuzzy Sounds started and where it’s going.
Good Fuzzy Sounds – the zine
Good Fuzzy Sounds’ name came from the blurb for a pedal designed by DIY pioneer Craig Anderton.
The project started out as a zine about fuzz, with interviews and drawings, which I published in 2011.
Download my Good Fuzzy Sounds zine (.pdf, 49mb)
Good Fuzzy Sounds – the business
I have been making pedals and projects for fun for a long time (check out my Old Builds for examples). I wanted to share them with other people, so I made Good Fuzzy Sounds into a business in 2020.
With Good Fuzzy Sounds I am returning to the files of old schematics I’ve collected over the years for inspiration, tracings of obscure lost pedals, and photocopies from old hobby magazines I’ve found online.
I want to make pedals as good as my favourite 1960s fuzzes, but not by copying them. I’m interested in trying to get into the headspace of those early experimenters and match them, using different circuits, and getting far out into the sonic possibilities of germanium fuzz.
I often think about hearing ‘that’ sound on a single for the first time, or plugging in a fuzz for the first time in 1965. When someone hears one of my pedals I want them to experience that moment again.
Good Fuzzy Sounds – my values
This is what it’s all about.
Good Fuzzy Sounds is for people Like You
I make and sell beautiful, unique, extreme, unconventional fuzz tones for people who want other possibilities. My hand-made pedals are powered by intersectional queer and gender non-conforming autism. Good Fuzzy Sounds is not interested in cis-het rock posturing or dick-swinging. You won’t find the usual sexist or violent metaphorical names or military-industrial-complex symbolism here.
Good Fuzzy Sounds is queer as fuzz
When I say queer I am using a reclaimed term to mean something strange, unusual, unexpected, eccentric, unnatural: a deviation from the norm. Queer, trans and non-binary people have never been able to conform to the usual categories!
Fuzz is queer because it makes something good out of what was always assumed to be bad. By making pedals in the way that I do, I am queering fuzz, evoking the time when the white music industry freaked out at the thought of distortion of any kind.
Good Fuzzy Sounds is Autistic
I experience the world, including fuzz, with intensity and exceptional focus. I bring these qualities to my experiments, pedal making and design.