Dirty Haggard Audio DH-2 Death Fuzz

The Shin-Ei FY-2 Companion fuzz is one of the fuzz world’s most underrated and yet distinctive sounding circuits, with its nasty, sizzly high end and faint upper octave sting.  That being said, however, due to some of its idiosyncrasies it can be nigh unusable in modern settings.  It has a huge midrange cut in its basic EQ and it barely reaches unity volume so when you step on an original FY-2 you get buried in the mix.  This makes it a great studio tool but really hard to work with in a band scenario.  Luckily Nick over at Dirty Haggard Audio took it upon himself to correct these and make this circuit into a whole new thing with the DH-2 Death Fuzz.

Firstly, he added a ton of noise filtering to the power supply and a switchable noise gate to lower the operating noise floor of the pedal down to nothing with the gate on and next to nothing with it off.  Secondly the gain structure of the pedal has been totally reworked for a fuller, more dynamic sound with a wider range of tones available.  Lastly, an amplifier section has been added to the pedal’s output so now it has enough headroom to drive your signal way past unity gain (plus the output is now high impedance so it’ll work better with other pedals) and a filter control has also been added to give you much more control over the pedal’s tonality and high end bite.  Overall this pedal keeps the same general character and vibe of the original but kicks it up a notch in terms of versatility and range of tones available.  If you’re looking for a mean, nasty octave fuzz the DH-2 could be just the ticket.  Come try one today and bring some death to your rig!

• Added Noise Gate

The Companion Fuzz (as is the case with most fuzz pedals) was known to have a loud noise-floor/lots of hiss. The Death fuzz has a toggle switch to kill the hiss and noise without affecting sound quality. The result is silence when not playing or during breaks within your riffs. Or you can toggle the gate off for the classic vintage feel.       

• Filter Control

The original Companion Fuzz pedal had a hard-wired band-reject filter, resulting in a constant midrange scoop.  The Death Fuzz features a unique filter design which changes the overall character of the sound across the whole frequency spectrum, giving you much more tone control while retaining the feel of the original.

• Power Supply Filtering

Aggressive low-pass filtering of the DC power supply for maximum noise and ripple rejection.  Made with high quality electrolytic and ceramic capacitors which are rated for much higher voltage applications.  The result is minimal wear and tear on these capacitors over time, ensuring decades of quiet operation.

• Redesigned Gain Circuitry

The original gain structure pitted two out-of-phase transistors against each other through a variable resistor(gain pot).  This added to the low-output volume problem of the pedal and produced a limited range of function.  The redesigned gain structure keeps out-of-phase signals from clashing with one another, giving you a much wider range of function, from a 'voltage starved' sound when used with the gate, to full brutality with or without the gate.

• Added Output Amplifier

The added output amplifier corrects the originals low output signal, with the added benefit of having a much more agreeable 10k ohm output impedance so it will play nicely with your other effects pedals.

• Radio Frequency Rejection

2-stage RFI/EMI input filtering prevents radio frequencies from entering the circuit so you don't have any annoying radio pickup coming out of your amp.

• Quality Circuit Boards

Durable printed circuit boards built to last.  Buy right or buy twice.