My 9th VFE Pedal has landed - the warm and richly textured Fuzz Cocktail Octave Fuzz

So I wasn’t fully aware of this pedal until relatively recently - I have several search updates assigned on Reverb.com - and this pedal had never come up for me before - until around one month ago. Obviously there is the VFE Woodchipper Brassmaster style Octave Fuzz within the main VFE Range - so Peter possibly thought that having 2 Octave Fuzzes in the range would be a touch too much - and as a result the Fuzz Cocktail was only made available during the briefest of windows.

There’s another VFE Fuzz I’ve been chasing for a long while now - the hybrid Fuzz Duo - which has so far been unobtanium for me - for almost 10 years - the search goes on for that! Will be nice to get to 10 VFE Pedals eventually - with 3 fuzz pedals in the line-up.

There are seemingly 6 x 2N5088 Silicon Transistors in the Main Fuzz circuit - with a further 3 for the wave rectifier octave circuit presumable - one of those is concealed and impossible to classify - while there are 2 easily identifiable ones - a 2931A MOSFET and BS170 FET.

You get a really warm sounding richly textured fuzz - which sounds spectacular with the Half-Wave Octave. I really like the core Non-Octave voicing too, while the Full-Wave Octave sounds a little odd to me!

Controls - BIG } Tone / Sustain / Fuzz, small } Octave Voicing : Full-Wave Octave Rectifier (Asymmetrical) / None / Half-Wave Octave Rectifier, Tone > Boost : Variable Tone Defeat, Clean Blend.

My preferred settings are all the Big Knobs on Max, the two small knobs fully CCW, and the Octave switch on Half! That sounds perfect!

The Tone > Boost knobs is slightly unusual in being a variable Tone Defeat - which boosts the output as you turn it clockwise. I need the Tone control to balance the frequencies - so I have this dial fully turned back at all times. Same goes for the Clean Blend - where anything above fully CCW somewhat reduces the texture and harmonics -  where I’m all about harmonics and texture!

This is an unusually warm-sounding richly textured Octave Fuzz - I think I probably prefer it to the VFE Woodchipper. In fact this is one of my favourite octave fuzz sounds - well worth the pickup really.

I don’t believe very many of these were made - I’m thinking only around 20-30. While I was lucky to find a Mint Edition - which nonetheless was going for the full typical VFE price of $199 - I very much consider this a great find, and I hope to repeat that luck for a Fuzz Duo to come my way! The Fuzz Cocktail came from Reverb.com - where it’s long since discontinued. Like I said previously I had never seen one of these available previously - since I first got interested in VFE Pedals at the end of 2017, and most of mine were acquired 2018-20.

My VFE Pedals capsule collection now stands at 9! :

• Alpha Dog Distortion (Rat)
• Blues King Overdrive (BluesBreaker)
• Distortion3 (MXR Distortion+, DOD 250, MXR Micro Amp)
• Dark Horse Distortion (DS-1++)
• Fuzz Cocktail Octave Fuzz (in middle of visual as latest addition!)
• Fiery Red Horse Fuzz (Ram’s Head Muff)
• Merman Transparent Overdrive (Klone)
• Vomit Hound Dual Overdrive / Distortion (Alpha Dog + Pale Horse [TS808+])
• Woodchipper Octave Fuzz (Brassmaster)

Per the second visual below!