Magnetic Effects White Atom Fuzz Pedal

The Magnetic Effects White Atom provides a broad palette of vintage fuzz tones with modern design appointments that address the limitations and quirks of traditional fuzz circuits.

By Chris Loeffler

From the humble beginnings of a simple circuit path meant to capture the sound of an overdriven and torn speaker, fuzz has evolved to one of the most nuanced and divisive of tone effects available to guitarists. Covering sonic ground as diverse as classic raspy distortion, liquid violin-like leads, square wave lo-fi synths, and woofy walls of distortion, there are as many uses and applications for fuzz as there are players using them. Magnetic Effects out of the UK built the Magnetic Effects White Atom Fuzz to provide players with classic fuzz sounds with modern tone sculpting options.

Powered by a 9v battery or adaptor, the Magnetic Effects White Atom offers a versatile array of fuzz tones that cover almost any fuzz tone imaginable with it’s Volume, Texture, Tone, and Gain controls.  The pedal uses a selected combination of silicon and Germanium transistors to create the fuzz tone and features true bypass and features a high input/low output impedance for flexible signal chain placement.

What You Need To Know

• The Volume and Gain knobs cover a wide range, allowing for roaring, saturated fuzz at volumes way below unity volume or transparent clean boosts with enough output to push any preamp into breakup.  With the gain all the way down, there isn’t even a hint of hair and most players would be hard pressed to realize it was even on.  At about 9:00 a subtle, class-A style amp breakup happens with single coils and from there until about noon the fuzz takes on an increasingly saturated amp sound until reaching full blown fuzz anywhere beyond.

• The Tone knob runs a comfortable EQ sweep from dark without being muddy to treble focused and sharp.  The Texture control offers the ability to starve the circuit and produces a variety of textures and saturation in the fuzz effect.  When it turned all the way up the Texture knob creates a fuzz tone that is tight, focused, and brassy.  As the Texture knob is rolled down the fuzz begins to loosen up, become less focused, and more ambient textures of fuzz emerge.  Below noon, the knob takes it into spity, heavily gated territory with a distinct lofi, almost bit crushed edge.

• Magnetic Effects designed the White Atom to have a high impedance input and a low impedance output.  This effectively removes the traditional limitation of fuzzes reliance of being as close to the original pickup output as possible and allows for placement anywhere in the signal chain (like after the wah) without noticeable tonal changes.  The pairing the silicon and Germanium transistors yields much more consistent tones that don’t fluxuate excessively in extreme temperature conditions or varying power sources.

Limitations

• As far a fuzz tones go, one area the White Atom doesn’t tread in is the smoother, violin-like sustained lead tones.  The openness of the fuzz tone doesn’t allow for that level of compression and focus.

Conclusions

The Magnetic Effects White Atom Fuzz offers a diverse array of classic fuzz tones (and some fun, lofi quirks) without the limitation and baggage of most vintage fuzzes and a lot more stability.  Dialing in the exact fuzz tone desired is surprisingly simple to do, and the texture knob ensures players are able to fine tune the characteristics of the fuzz to their setup’s needs. 

Resources

Magnetic Effects White Atom Fuzz Product Page (MSRP £95)

Magnetic Effects White Atom Fuzz Product Manual

Magnetic Effect White Atom Fuzz Videos