Dr. Scientist Frazz Dazzler Review

Bass players love fuzz pedals. Unfortunately, many fuzz pedals don’t love basses, or more specifically, active basses. However, any pedal that comes with a blend or mix knob allows some bit of hope. However, with the Frazz Dazzler pedal from Dr. Scientist Sounds, you have the best of both worlds; a fuzz pedal that works well with all sorts of basses AND has a mix knob for your particular taste.

Choosing to demo this pedal with my Warwick Artist Series Jack Bruce Survivor for its active/passive capabilities, I plugged in the pedal and fired it up. The pedal itself is very intuitive; the basic knobs are volume and mix. The sizzle knob controls the high frequencies, and the gain knob controls the overall gain. The switch gives you two particular stages, where you can choose between overdrive and a heavily gated fuzz. As a bonus, there’s an expression jack to control the mix knob; perfect for ramping up the dirt during a heavier passage.

The first sounds I got out of the Frazz were great. It’s got a pleasing overall tone that on the left gain stage, gives you a good dirt sound, perfect for heavy rock or even just giving you that little edge. The sizzle knob pulls it into more of a distortion when it’s maxed. Throughout this whole process, the mix knob was used in various spots and even at 100% wet, the low end is kept intact. Personally, on this side I preferred the mix at around 50%, to give my sound that bit of an edge but not color the sound toomuch.

And then I switched the gain stage over to the right side, to check out the gated fuzz. On this side, I found that the sizzle knob had a much greater effect, changing the color of the fuzz from dark and thick to light and biting. The mix knob is better used on this side, although still at 100% wet, it retains low end (especially with the sizzle knob all the way counter-clockwise). This is also the stage where the volume knob would probably get a lot more use, because there is a LOT of gain at this stage, and the fuzz is awesome. I liked pulling the gain to about 50%, where you start hearing those 8-bit artifacts breaking up and decaying.

To be honest, to say the Frazz Dazzler from Dr. Scientist Sounds is a fuzz pedal is kind of a misnomer. There are two specific gain stages on this pedal. The left stage is a nice, tasty overdrive that gets you some great rock sounds. The right sound is a massive, gated fuzz that depending on how you have the gain set, can give you some of those 8-bit artifacts on the end of your tone. Put together, this is one versatile and angry robot that’s sure to be used quite a bit on my pedalboard.