My 4-in-1 Manson Supermassive Black Fuzz has landed - and it's an amazingly wide-ranging full-on Fuzz that touches on all the classic references and delivers plenty more besides!

What we have here is an incredibly potent fuzz - consisting of 3 x OpAmps, 3 x Silicon Transistors, and 2 x Blue LEDs - so the core fuzz flavour is already immense and richly textured - very much ’Supermassive’ in its output. And you then have an impressively powerful tone stack essentially - consisting of an expansive Filter [Warp] (350Hz > 5kHz) used in tandem with a wide-ranging ’Q’ bandwidth control [Dimension]. So essentially a sort of semi-parametric EQ - where you set your chosen Frequency with the Warp / Filter control, and then fine-tune it with the Dimension / ’Q’ control - which delivers broader, flatter and deeper sounds CCW and becomes more strident, sharper, and sizzling - when you rotate the ’Q’ clockwise - passing through a sort of cocked-wah dynamic in the mid-section.

You then have the second / left-hand ’Peak’ footswitch - which gives you options on the Filter Boost - applying Band Pass by default I feel, and then when the Footswitch is pressed / LED lit On - you get an alternative All-Pass / Static Phase Filter - which shapes the output in quite a different way - generally making it more articulate. I find that it really depends on where your Frequency and ’Q’ are set - as to which of the ’Peak’ footswitch modes sound better for that context - while you’re always going to get a distinctly different output with those  2 x Peak Filter Options.

You also have the central EQ-On/Off switch - so you can deploy the Supermassive with 2 x EQ On-and-Off across the 2 ’Peak’ Filter Footswitch Modes (Bandpass / All-Pass) - hence my 4-in-1 in the title! All those elements together help you touch on Big Muff, Fuzz Face and even Tone Bender flavours - not always exactly those - but very obviously in those ballparks.

As mentioned - there are so many different tones and textures here - this really is such an incredibly potent and versatile device.

While in some ways it’s probably best for intermediate players - as the dial-in may be a little fiddly / tricky for some fuzz newbies!

I personally tend to have the Level [Magnitude] and Gain [Gravity] set fairly high. Those are mostly in fixed positions for me - both around 3/4’s of their tapers - which is easily visible on the ’Gravity’ Control (as its Ellipse design kind of works as a ’Marker’) - but where it’s impossible to discern visibly - where the Magnitude is pointing - you just need to gauge it by touch and feel mostly!

My only bugbear with this device is really in the ’controls’ department. It’s extremely potent for sure, but has a degree of complexity on the dial-in - which doesn’t make it the easiest fuzz to get along with necessarily - however great you can make it sound.

So it does on occasion make you work a little extra for those superior tones - while there are plenty of those to be found within that device - you just need to scope them out!

Those engraved Knob-tops are pretty, but really quite impractical - as apart from the Gain / Gravity knob - which has that central ellipse - that sort of acts like a marker - all the other knobs have somewhat more amorphous designs - which you just can’t gauge positionally at a glance - certainly not from a standing position - which has traditionally always been one of the benefits of for an analog device!

I feel it’s always important to have proper markers on knobs - indeed so you can reference preferred settings and serving suggestions! - Manson could even have incorporated markers into those ornate etched designs - where it’s currently quite impossible to reference preferred settings - as visibly you can’t tell where most of those knobs are ’pointing’!

I also would not have made it trickier to understand the controls - by naming those somewhat amorphously too - Magnitude and Gravity kind of make immediate sense - but you would be hard pushed to guess the meaning of Warp, Dimension and Peak. Giving instructions - when you have to keep translating the labels - is so much more verbose and complicated than if the labels were just - Level, Frequency, ’Q’, Gain, and Filter Mode!