Top 10 😍 Joe Gore Filth Fuzz ✨

The downside of complex fuzzes is that they’re a little too wide-ranging, with to many settings you’ll probably never use. It’s easy to waste 20 minutes tweaking knobs without ever nailing the perfect tone. This is what inspired the Joe Gore Filth Interactive Fuzz. It has only four controls, but it’s a cornucopia of cool, quirky, and usable fuzz flavors.

The drive and level controls do what you’d expect. But unlike many fuzz drive controls, this one sounds great throughout its range. Extreme settings are molten-lava thick. Lower settings are like slightly cooled lava, maybe?

But the real action is in the two sliders. They’re tone controls of a sort, but not in the usual way. Most fuzz tone controls are tone-sucking passive circuits situated downstream from the fuzz effect. But here, the sliders alter the voltages at the transistors, radically changing not only the tone, but also the timbre and response. They profoundly alter the fuzz’s core character.

How to use: Set desired gain and output levels. Move the sliders till it sounds awesome.

Cautions: Filth sounds best before any buffered effects. It usually works best at or near the front of your effect chain.

Filth Joystick Fuzz was created in San Francisco and is built in Michigan by skilled craftspeople earning a fair wage.

Reviews and Testimonials

“Amazing sustain, sweetly aggro tones, and just enough sonic weirdness to turn peoples’ heads. Bravo!”
– Guitar Player magazine

“Filth is pretty f’in great!”
— Joe Barresi, producer (Queens of the Stone Age, Soundgarden, Slipknot, Melvins, Bad Religion)

“I’ve been looking for six months to find a sound I heard in my head, and I’ve been trying every pedal I can. Filth is it—within three minutes of missing around, I realized it had everything I’ve ben looking for. It can do every sound from the Stones’ ‘Satisfaction’ to Tom Waits’ ‘Cold Water’ to synth-sounding stuff. It scratches me right where I itch!”
–
Dan Vickrey (Counting Crows)

“Filth is exceptional AND sonically flexible. Joe works in a number of different musical situations and has developed an extraordinarily flexible and musical fuzz. Last year my friend David Torn went on a fuzz bender. i joined in on the pedals that he strongly recommended i check out. But nothing comes close to this in terms of timbral diversity, response, and joy.”
– Matte Henderson (John Medeski, Natalie Merchant, Screaming Headless Torsos, Mick Karn, solo artist)

“Holy shit! What a pedal! It’s such a thrill to be able to go straight to insane tonal meltdown and then taper it back to a sputtering, fried mosquito yelp. This pedal can go between brutal and beautiful all within the push of either of the two sliders. 10 outta 10. F*** yeah!!!”

– Matt Wallace, producer (Maroon 5, Faith No More, the Replacements, REM)

“This is an absurdly versatile fuzz pedal despite its simple layout. You can easily dial in classic fuzz tones and get some newer tweaky-type sounds. The X and Y controls are very interactive, allowing you to obtain endless amounts of filthy fuzz. Tight or loose, stable or sputter, whippet-thin or morbidly obese—it’s in there! This is a great fuzz for those looking for some Kevin Shields My Bloody Valentine-type tones and some good old Big Muff type tones. I LOVE IT!!!”
– Fuzz Box Girl (Guitar effects blogger)

“Filth is amazing—I love it. So many, many sounds. I dig the way they feel, and how changeable that feel is.”
– David Torn (solo artist, David Bowie, k.d. lang, John Legend, Madonna, Tori Amos, Jeff Beck)

“Do you know about Joe Gore? He builds amazing pedals. We used a few pedals of his, and the Filth Fuzz in particular. If you’re looking for a killer fuzz pedal, check him out.”

— Pete Loeffler (Chevelle)

“I love this pedal. It makes me feel so dirty.”
— Mark Goldenberg (Jackson Browne, Bonnie Raitt, Chris Isaak, Linda Ronstadt, Hugh Laurie, Waylon Jennings, solo artist)

Here’s an unsolicited but utterly awesome demo David Torn shared on SoundCloud: