New British Pedal Brand OFX unleashes intriguing hybrid-voiced Ram's Head x Sovtek Big Muff style Purple Ohm Fuzz

OFX is shorthand for Oliver FX, named after Brit Richard Oliver, who is 1/3rd of the Chasing Tone Podcast - alongside Brian Wampler and Blake Wyland. He’s long held an interest in DIY Pedal Building and Breadboarding, and with some help from Brian managed to finalised the circuit that became the Purple Ohm Fuzz.

My friend Adrian Thorpe of ThorpyFX was initially meant to be the silent OEM Partner for this project, but Tom Quayle let the cat out of the bag during his demo - that ThorpyFX indeed manufactured these pedals. Unusually for Thorpy - this is a site-mounted design, which I don’t mind - but I find the positioning of the power port somewhat anyone - I would be much happier here if they followed the Boss convention - and stuck the power port up top!

Other than that that it’s a very decent looking and sounding pedal - with absolutely the right knob choices, and a kind of whimsical artwork - good colourway too.

I’m kind of up to my elbows in Big Muffs these days - with around 130 in the Reference Collection to-date and more on the backlog already - where those will be joined by this one too eventually. Although I’ve no idea exactly when I will land this particular one - I have so many priorities already.

Some of the controls are a little odd - the Tone is a reverse pot - with Treble accentuation CCW and Mids and Lows Accentuation CW. Whenever I see a toggle switch on a Muff - I typically expect either a Skreddy 2-way configuration or Vick Audio 3-way Mids, where I prefer a 4th variable Mids knob ideally - which appears on a number of Stomp Under Foot Muff types!

Controls - Tone : Highs > Lows, Voice : More Presence / Stock, Level, Sustain.

So there are a few quirks here vis-a-vis my own preferences - while principally the Purple Ohm looks really decent, and sounds pretty great. I still have the Dazatronyx Big Fuzz Console on my board - with its 10 knobs and 30 toggle-switches - that’s surely still the King of all Muffs!. And I also have a recent Croatian Sovtek Muff which is absolutely blisteringly great sounding - with a smart internal dip switch - which allows you to bypass either or both of the Diode Pairs - it also has a variable Mids Sweep.

This Purple Ohm Fuzz is definitely a target for me, pretty well priced at £185. I would definitively have preferred top-mounted jacks here alongside a top-positioned power port - while all in all I can’t really grumble - this is definitely another contender. Me personally I would have gone with 4 knobs, and externalised some Diode bypass options!

The Purple Ohm Fuzz is currently available for order on the OFX Webstore. It’s well worthy a flutter!