NPD/NFD

[nuke_diver]

New pedal day == new fuzz day == new Pharaoh day

 

I posted this over in HCEG but since I found out about the Pharaoh here I thought I'd repost it...extra post counts that way

 

I first saw the Pharaoh on a video from PGS here on HCEF and became interested in a fuzz. I spent a lot of time looking around listening to clips, reading reviews etc. But I kept coming back the Pharaoh. Because I am a major Fuzz newbie I decided to ask Mark from BAT some questions to help me decide if a fuzz was going to be right for me.

 

First off Mark was incredibly patient with all my questions and answered them all quickly and honestly. I was very impressed with the customer service and put it in the same category as that which I got from Bryan at BG Pups. I like rewarding such service and I also like to reward small businessman who put their heart and soul into the product so I ordered a Pharaoh from Mark and within a week it showed up. I haven't taken a picture but it looks just like this

 

 

 

I'm still very much in the tweaking phase with it though I spent probably 4-5 hours total playing with it through different guitars and amp settings. As advertised the characteristics of the amp/guitar still come through, something I honestly didn't expect from a "distorted" signal. I got a lot of sounds I never got before. With the Si diode it can get very gainy/very distorted and is much louder than the Ge diode which is much softer. The tone controls are responsive as is the volume. I had heard it was very loud and while it can be I have much more control over the levels than I do with my Cool Cat pedals. This allows me to find a lot of use for it even though I'm only a bedroom player (though some of things I played my wife thought was very loud ). I've run it as a light OD all the way to a very heavy fuzz and I like it a lot. I can't say which guitar or setting sounds best because they all sound pretty damn good IMO

 

Even though it's still the honeymoon period I am pretty sure it's a keeper and it will likely kick the CC red distortion into the closet (since my amp distortion is better anyways and I wasn't using it much not a hard decision). I can't say that it's the worlds best fuzz...there are a lot of them out there. I can say that I like what I hear and I'm having a ton of fun with it (even managed to record something new because of it...but no I'm not posting the clip because my playing doesn't do justice to the pedal and other clips are 1000x better anyways). I can also say that Mark from BAT (also on the boards I found out after I got it The Riffer is his board name I believe) was a great pleasure to deal with and if you are in the money for a good fuzz do check out Black Art Toneworks and see if one of his pedals will work for you.