Hybrid Fuzz Driver

Name: Hybrid Fuzz Driver
Brand: Skreddy Pedals
SKU: HFD-deposit
Price: 301 USD
Availability: OutOfStock

Amp-like, articulate boost, overdrive, and light fuzz

SKU: HFD-deposit

Stock Status: Available for pre-order

We build everything to order. Our current wait time is approximately 1 month. I will confirm your order shortly, and I will send you a PayPal invoice for the total amount due when your order is ready to ship. --Marc

Price: $301 + shipping

Amp-like, articulate boost, overdrive, and light fuzz that brings your guitar tone to life

Reviews • Clips • Manual

Engaging and touch sensitive, the Skreddy™ Hybrid Fuzz Driver brings your guitar tone to life!

Has a treble-boosted flavor. Distorts with a creamy voice yet retains your guitar's essential nature, preserving tightness and airiness across the full range of settings.

Aggressive but not too fuzzy in high-gain mode; articulate boost in low-gain mode.

Clean up with guitar volume is phenomenal, predictable and smooth.

Don't worry about the word "fuzz;" this pedal goes anywhere in the signal chain just fine. The impedance-matching input stage works behind wah pedals without squeal or tone suck and does not mind having buffers in front of it either--retains cleanup and touch sensitivity regardless of where you put it. Absolutely LOVES to have a phaser or vibe in front, too.

"Classic rock in a box"

Clarity, snap, twang, and sparkle married with a rich, organic, "brown sound" distortion; sounds like a cranked late 60's non-master-volume British amp.

Works great with all types of pickups though it was designed with PAF-style humbuckers in mind. Truly stellar with single coils too! I intended to make it sound like Jimmy Page's Marshall 1959SLP for Led Zeppelin's live tones, but in so doing I happened to nail pretty much every other classic rock tone there is, from Gilmour to EVH, with notable stops in SRV and Trower land. Even does metal if you feed it with hot EMG pickups, same as you'd expect a cranked Marshall to do.

Tone Report: Best Pedals of 2013

Controls:

Mid Boost: Sets the gain of the input stage, and is set to boost mids rather than full range boost. Gives you more aggression, gain, and compression but keeps the bass TIGHT. If you want more headroom and cleanness, this is what you'll want to turn down first. This is your hot, sustaining pre-amp gain control.
Tightness: (A subtle control) Dials in the amount of low mids going into the fuzz section, to give you a light, sparkly attack clockwise, or add swampy saturation and beefy chug counter-clockwise, or keep it neutral in the middle. This control is somewhat interactive with the Mid Boost control as it affects its frequency range.
Fuzz: Sets the gain of the overdrive section and takes you from clean through touch-sensitive overdrive all the way to sustaining, cranked-amp fuzz. Gives you greasy, chimey, huge-sounding power-tube type distortion.
Presence: Lets you get a lot more brilliance and bite or make it darker and smoother, to suit your amp and taste. A lot of treble boost is available; you might want this turned down when the other controls are cranked up. I usually keep it at noon.
Volume: Passive humbucker pickups should achieve unity gain between noon and 2:00 o'clock. Passive single coil pickups should find unity gain around noon. Active humbuckers might take 3:00 o'clock to reach unity gain volume.

Power

9v battery is not included. If you use a battery, then remember to un-plug the input cable from the pedal’s input jack when not in use to prevent draining (or you can also just plug in a power-supply, which disconnects the battery).

You may supply external power through an AC adapter. All Skreddy Pedals accept the industry-standard 9v DC plug (5.5mm barrel x 2.1mm center coax), negative tip. Please use a quality, regulated, filtered power supply.

Reviews

thorn

So dig mate, for my brand new band Birds In Space I’ve been trying and testing everything... found this thing used at Truetone Music Santa Monica... out of literally 30-40 overdrives in the last month I’m like whoa! WTF?! Took my plexi non master volume London Power Scaled amp with very little gain and got me close to Pagey solo tone on Nobody’s Fault But Mine

Very tasty indeed! Then I’m reading about you and your array of boxes and I’m like, this dude is as obsessive as me!

You had me at Page’s live at MSG sound!

Mighty Grateful!

Check the tracks on http://www.birdsinspace.com

...

That sound actually inspired me to write a new piece last night... It’s kinda like that articulate, papery sound of pre-Rola Greenback speakers you hear on recordings of that era... or maybe it’s a fuzz I’m hearing

Like on Rock Steady by Bad Co, that guitar sound on the intro

...

So dig, first time using it at full band rehearsal... I’m running a boutique 50 watt Plexi with the SoloDallas Storm boost always on.... I step on the HFD for solos and it’s pure sex and fire mate! Everything a tube screamer is not!

Well, you know, you made it!!

Run everything pretty much straight up 12 noon, just as the Good Lord intended!!

My band love it too! The solos explode off the fretboard!

...

I just got it and only used it at one rehearsal... check our Instagram, I gave you a shoutout!!

birdsinspacerock

I will use it live at our next show Thursday May 16 @ The Lucky Strike Hollywood!!

Never bonded with TS type overdrives and have found a few transparent types rather good... My sound and approach is similar to Pagey I guess... solos on bridge pickup of a Rock n Roll Relics Les Paul... the pickup specially wound for me by Wade Westbrook of Motor City Pickups is A5 low output like 8.0 yet the most aggressive, articulate thing ever, like a TTop on steroids!..the HFD is a horse of a different color mate!

We are a brand new band and at this point I don’t want to deal with effects... the best effect is a killer versatile sound and vicious technique and execution! Right now it’s just SoloDallas Storm boost on all the time and HFD for solos!

I’ve never had this much confidence when I step on a box for leads! It just focuses and articulates while giving the “in between”an elasticity or glue that allows me to flow without a bunch of gain or distortion

Cheers!

ItJustRocks

"One of my favorite overdrive pedals is the Cornish G2. While I still love that pedal, the HFD really upstaged it in terms of dynamics, how it cleans up with the volume knob and how it sounds across all pickup positions, especially the in-between positions."

Brett

"Hey Marc,

I just had to email you to let you know how effing excited I am to have just gotten this Hybrid Fuzz Driver from Chicago Music Exchange. Goddamn, this is without a doubt in the top 1 or 2 of dirty boosts I've ever used --- and being as that's one of my favorite styles of pedal, I've owned a lot.

I actually bought one of these from Pedalgeek shortly after they came out, but at the time I was trying to use it through a dead clean BF Fender style amp and it just wasn't what I was looking for (wanted more color/compression/etc. --- like the Screw Driver). But now, I'm down to one, dirty Marshall style amp, and decided to buy another HFD, and I'm so glad I did. KILLER boost. From mild cleanish boost with tone shaping to treble booster type tones to fat fuzzy boost. Love this thing! And I especially love the way you've dialed in the tightness control --- it never gets muddy, even with a really gained up amp.

I was/am a big fan of the Screw Driver (there are a couple of quotes on your product page attesting to that) and I had used the SD as a dirty boost some. It was great with a just breaking up amp, but it was a bit too compressed into a dirtier amp. This pedal really corrects any "issues" that the SD might have had in that regard.

I've been a Skreddy fan for years and have been fortunate to enjoy a bunch of them, from off the shelf to custom ones (thank you for those!), but it's been too long since I've had one of your pedals on my board. Glad I rectified that this week. You have really created a special pedal with the HFD.
...
I've got a new baby in the house and haven't been getting much playing time lately, but I was up till near 3 last night playing through the HFD. Man that thing is the perfect solution for giving my amp a bigger set of balls --- even at late night volumes."

Richard

"I'm absolutely LOVING my Hybrid Fuzz Driver . . . seriously man - this is the real deal tone. With my Strat or my PRS with NF-3 pickups I swear I can get any sound I want from clean to mean with this thing on. Just adjust the volume control to the grit level required and BAM. Wow wow wow. Great work dude! I'm actually considering of getting another one for stacking purposes..."

...3 months later...

"Man my HFD is still killing me - I tend to go digital anymore into my Eleven Rack for recording but that bad boy is still in front. There's something about the upper mids of that pedal that just sound *right* to me. It's never dull - but it's also never shrill . . . and the mid boost makes anything pop out in the mix. It's just fucking amazing brother."

Olav

"Hi,
the HFD arrived yesterday.
What a great box!
Love the sounds, not possible to make it sound bad.
Eq options are fantastic, well thought out.
All pickup combintions on my strat sounds great, never too sharp or too boomy.
Volume cleanup really is exeptional..

What more can I say? Thanks:-)

all the best, Olav"

Theo

"A few months ago I was on the hunt for a dirt pedal. I tend to geek-out and look at tons of reviews and clips before pulling the trigger on effects. At the time I hadn't heard of Skreddy Pedals, but luckily for me a member over at TGP recommended the Screw Driver. I made my way to your website and discovered the Hybrid Fuzz Driver which piqued my interest.

I tell you man, it's hard to judge pedals based on YouTube clips, but something about the HFD stood out to me. I kept coming back to it, so I figured I'd give it a shot. I hunted down a retailer that had one in stock (had to try four of five of them) and placed my order.

After getting some time with it, I have to tell you that this pedal is fucking awesome!! It really is everything you claim it is. It was a little lighter on the gain side of things than I was expecting, but I think that's part of the charm. So many pedals just go to excess on everything and rob dynamics, and sound congested and artificial. The HFD is very open and natural sounding and the fuzz just warms up and rounds out the sound enough so that it's very pleasing to the ear. Touch sensitivity and volume knob cleanup are great. It's classic rock in a box! I'm incredibly happy with it and just wanted to let you know that I think you did a really great job.
...
The HFD was my first Skreddy pedal, but it won't be my last!"

Vincent

"This is a killer pedal!!!! Wow! I am blown away by how good this pedal sounds. Well done Marc! It was totally worth the wait!
Thanks!!!
...
By the way, the Hybrid fuzz driver sound is addicting. I don't want to unplug once I start playing : )
you can quote me on that also !"

BarryW on TGP

"I really love mine. I've been using it in rehearsals for a few weeks with strat and 335. I got a truly cool tone with the strat into an old pro reverb, especially on the neck pickup. I'm not sure I can live without that sound! But even more interesting are the 335 tones with that thing. Do NOT pass up the opportunity to work with volume and tone knobs! That's where this pedal really shines, in the in-betweens. It's superb cranked too. There are so many variations from just slightly dirty to really thick, that you could easily put two of these on a board to use for different settings. Superb pedal Marc !"

cookieshoes on TGP

"All of the Skreddy's I have (Screw Driver, Lunar Module, Hybrid Fuzz) go into a clean Fender. Each one sounds great.

Regarding how the Hybrid fits in the lineup alongside the SD and the LM, I've never found the SD and LM to overlap as much as usually gets described, and I don't find that the Hybrid overlaps much with those other two either. Sure, you can tweak the pedals to get certain similar sounds, but the overall character of those sounds is still different enough between each pedal. There is a certain low-mids weight and fullness to the SD that I can't match with the LM, just as there is a brightness and fuzzy cut with the LM that I can't match with the SD. Like others have mentioned, the SD is touch-sensitive, and has a jangle/sparkle overdrive quality to it. To me, the Lunar Module is more the higher gain machine of the bunch, and gets everything from Sabbath to Mellon Collie Pumpkins depending on how you dial it in. SD is more Fillmore Cream and Zep to me. So, having both is easy, as they bring so much variety to the table just with those two pedals.

I think that the Hybrid fits in as a great missing link between the two pedals. Not just for accommodating the shift from Single Coil to Humbucker, but for also having an extra set of tones regardless of what amp or guitar you use. What really surprised me on the Hybrid Fuzz was the mids knob. That alone makes the Hybrid a unique pedal in the lineup, as it allows you to get great boosted midrange lead sounds (crank it enough and you can even get this great parked-wah type sound). Throw in the great cleanup and openness of the overall sound (vs the slightly compressed SD sound, or fuzzy-at-every-setting LM sound), and you have an extremely wide-range of tones.

Really dig this pedal, a winner indeed. Nice Trifecta of drive/fuzz pedals."

Barry

"Marc -

WOW.

That is a fine pedal. I just plugged it in with a les paul heritage elite I've owned for 30 some years and a small BF deluxe. on 2. WOW.

I can't tell you how long I've played, I've had my plexi since 74 and WOW. I can't tell you how nice and organic this thing sounds. How touch sensitive! How natural sounding!
I didn't even mess with the settings much - but WOW.

kudos ! And thanks. "

Michael Moody, Magic Amplification

"Pedals sound great!

The HFD is a very cool pedal. You kinda hit something nobody else has hit IMO.
...
BTW the HFD sounds killer with single coils too! Love it with my strat.
...
I am really diggin the HFD. It seems to be getting better with more use... just like a new amp.
...
I think the HFD is going to be a big hit with my customers. Really smokes with all of my amps. Sounds like a great top boost pedal at certain settings... clean boost, overdrive, distortion to low gain fuzz. Very dynamic!
...
Just wanted to let you know I played the HFD with my band last night and it was crazy good. I can't tell you how pleased I am now that I have had it in musical situations with multiple guitars. I actually enjoyed the HFD every bit as much with my strat as my Les Paul. I think it is great that you are marketing the pedal to be great with buckers but I'd definitely give it major props with any pickup."

Wolfstache

"Its fucking great pedal! I spent 200ish on my pickups and what I dig about this thing is that I can actually hear them throughout the gain...
...Pickups are Tom Short sweet 90's....they're more around $300"

Sound Clips

Mike Hermans

Jeff Ruiz

Playing through a Magic Amp, clean, with Skreddy Little Miss Sunshine, Hybrid Fuzz Driver, and Echo

David Torn

my first-run with the Skreddy Hybrid Fuzz Driver pedal...

ronin mirari gtr > skreddy HFD pedal > neunaber wet reverb pedal > fryette aether amp
recorded to iPhone,
followed by my typical quick mix in Logic.

https://soundcloud.com/jayapala/hymn-for-her-skreddy-hfd-demo-v01

my 2nd-run with the Skreddy Hybrid Fuzz Driver pedal...

ronin mirari gtr > skreddy HFD pedal > neunaber wet reverb pedal > fryette aether amp
recorded to iPhone,
followed by a quick mix in Logic.

https://soundcloud.com/jayapala/my-saturday-gc_skreddy-hfd-v02

here's one more quick clip of me kind of moving into "fuzz" tones, with my single-coils;
the amp itself had a bit of typical crossover crunch, but was not crazy-distorted.

https://soundcloud.com/jayapala/fuznotfuz-v01

Sam Vilo

Gearmandude

Allen Dean

Fuzz and Mid Boost are cranked. Tightness is at minimum, Presence is down low, and Volume is at just a slight boost (though the pickups are very loud, so this requires a fairly high setting on the Volume knob). Also featured are Little Miss Sunshine (before) and Echo (after).

Dustin Cole

dustincole+skreddyhfd.mp3

"I didn't have a lot of time to get more done like I wanted so I just threw a mic on the amp and hit record. Sorry for the clipping.

It really shines with humbuckers, as it should. I could easily see this being my only dirt pedal if I was in a band that allowed it.

Guitar is a Peavey T-60, into Skreddy HFD, EHX DMM for delay into the Egnater Tweaker 40 w/ 4x10 cab. I set the EQ switch to the Marshall setting.

Oh and to clarify, the lower gain tones later in the clip are with the guitar volume rolled back. I didn't change settings on the pedal. Very versatile pedal."

Me...

Volume knob cleanup: single coil pickups

pardon the crappy playing

Shine On (mp3 1.4 MB)

Clean parts are with volume set to 8, overdriven parts are with volume full up

Equipment used...

Hybrid Fuzz Driver set to less than half available gain, Little Miss Sunshine comes on after clean intro part, Skreddy Echo with main output set to dry, delay line sent to 2nd amp

Guitar: Warmoth Strat copy

Amp 1: Hiwatt Custom 100 (clean)

Amp 2: (mixed low) Fender Performer 1000 (only getting Echo delay line for added room ambience)

Post processing: stereo plate reverb plugin

Volume Knob Cleanup: humbuckers

pardon the crappy playing

Since Ive (mp3 954 kB)

Clean parts are with neck pickup volume set low, dirty parts are with bridge pickup volume set high