Review: Death by Audio Fuzz War

The Fuzz War is a monster of fuzz producing tons of gain for a great scooped metal tone. It simply has a volume and tone knob with an internal trimpot for controlling the gain/amount of fuzz. Read on to find out more about this aggressive fuzz box.



Hardware
You'll notice right away the the Fuzz War is housed in a huge enclosure, which seems unnecessary but it still looks good. It has top mounted jacks and 9V power input which is great for saving space. It has a knob to adjust the volume (this thing is loud!!!) and one to adjust the tone from a thin, trebly tone to a muffled, bassy one. Inside there is a trim-pot to control the amount of fuzz. Kind of weird to have it on the inside but I always liked on max best so it wasn't really a big problem. As far as fit and finish go, this thing is all around solid.

The Sounds
After owning this fuzz for almost a year, I've found that it certainly isn't too versatile. I had one setting that I always stuck to. This thing excels at aggressive scooped high gain tones. The top end has plenty of grit while the low end is huge. The one problem is: this thing doesn't really have any mids which certainly makes it harder to cut through a dense mix. While it is a little too scooped I love the sound this thing provides for metal and doom and combined with an octave pedal it absolutely is crushing. If it had a mids control it might have been my favorite fuzz. In the clip you'll hear the great high gain tone it provides and you might also notice the shifting of the tone control towards the end.

Death by Audio Fuzz War by Mike Fetting


Final Verdict
If you're going for a more scooped old-school death metal tone or anything similar this might be a fuzz to look into since it's absolutely brutal. I couldn't quite get a long with how scooped it was and it's lack of versatility but for a relatively affordable fuzz, it doesn't get much more brutal than this.

Note that this review is of the old version with only volume and tone control pots. The new version also has a fuzz control on the exterior.