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BAE Audio Hot Fuzz

BAE Audio releases the Hot Fuzz pedal, a two channel pedal with ’70 style fuzz tone and a top boost circuit.

BAE Audio Hot Fuzz

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This release marks the company’s first ever production line guitar stompbox, an interesting break from their current line of DI boxes, equalizers, compressors and preamplifiers, all of which are built to old school specifications.

The story goes that this pedal is the result of the personal quest of the company’s CEO, who himself is a guitarist who loves great guitar tones. Since he loved the sound of vintage treble boosters and ’70s era fuzz, he designed a way to combine the two effects in a compact stompbox that’s easy to use and operate.

At first, Mark focused on getting the fuzz sound similar to the tones heard on songs from the ’70s. To do this he studied ’70s era fuzz circuits and developed a way to replicate their sound with a bit of polishing. The press release mentioned that they were able to pin point the actual components that give these old fuzz pedals their distinct voice, and this includes specialized transistors of which Loughman and his team have now found a way to replicate.

BAE Audio CEO Mark Loughman expounds. “I’m a guitar player myself, and I didn’t feel like there was a stompbox on the market that captured the singing sound of a classic 70s fuzz, the kind that just cuts right through the mix… My reference point was the lead guitar tone on the Isley Brothers version of ‘Summer Breeze,’ and I would say we nailed it.

After getting the fuzz tone sounding the way he wants it to sound, Mark decided to add in a treble booster to expand the tone options that the pedal can provide. So what BAE Audio did is to replicate the sound of Mark’s favorite vintage treble booster and pack the circuit inside their new fuzz pedal, in a separate and independent channel.

Both the boost and fuzz sections of the pedal have dedicated true-bypass footswitches for engaging any of the two effects in the order that you prefer. The fuzz channel gives you control over the bass and treble frequencies for tone shaping, as well as essentials like a gain knob for adjusting the output, and a juice knob for tweaking the amount of fuzz. The boost section lets you set the total gain when boosted, making it useful for emphasizing riffs and lead lines.

Mark Loughman concludes, “Guitarists, like recording engineers, are very discerning about the sounds they’re chasing,” he says. “BAE Audio has delivered first class studio tools that meet engineers’ highest standards for many years, and we’re happy to offer something in that spirit for guitar players. It will also allow those guitar players who are not yet familiar with our studio gear a chance to experience BAE Audio quality for the first time. What they may not know is that there is no going back.”

The new BAE Hot Fuzz is now available with a retail price of $225, you can find out more about the pedal by visiting BAE Audio.

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