Most fuzz pedals are twists on the classics and that is fine. There’s always some way to spritz up the circuits that defined it as one of the most effective – and, okay, oftentimes most divisive – guitar effects pedals of all time. But what about something completely new?
JHS Pedals says it has launched just that in the form of the Coyote. Okay, it’s not technically new. Indeed, it is a clone.
But it is a clone like no other, replicating a cult fuzz that almost none of us will have had a chance to play with, nor to be familiar with its sound; the Moonrock Fuzz, a handmade labour of love by the late North Carolina pedal maker Glenn ("G.S.") Wylie.
The Moonrock Fuzz was housed in aircraft-grade aluminium housing on a steel base, fashioned to look like it came from the moon. Where it came from was Wylie’s imagination and electrical engineering smarts; that’s where the idea to use a transformer came in.
This, says JHS Pedals, is what makes it weird.
“The circuit has a transformer, but it’s not doing what transformers do in other octave fuzzes,” says JHS Pedals. “It’s not creating the octave at all. Glenn put it somewhere else entirely, where it acts more like an inductive element, shaping how the fuzz stage responds and contributing to the swell, fuzz, and octave character of the control. We’ve never seen anyone do this.”
The Moonrock Fuzz was handmade in small quantities. Wylie died in 2014. The Coyote is both a tribute to Wylie’s ingenuity and to the man himself. And there’s a lot to like about this (it’s hard to dislike a two-knob fuzz, especially when one of the knobs effectively cycles through three different and distinct modes).
JHS Pedals knows its audience. It knows its players.
“If you love Hendrix, Jack White, Gary Clark Jr, Beck, Black Keys, or the octave fuzz on John Mayer’s Belief – you already know you want this,” it says, adding that this is for the “fuzz scavenger” who has tried everything else, been around the wholes with the Muff-style variants, the Fuzz Face-alikes, only to return to square one.
The closest comparison to a classic fuzzbox would be the Tone Bender but this, still, is not that. The Coyote is something quite different.
So here we have it, a Volume knob controls overall output, while the Swell/Fuzz/Octave knob cycles through the three voicings.
Swell will present you will something alien, extra-terrestrial as far as electric guitar tones go – “notes bloom in with a gated, reversed-tape quality”– and it’s a really touch-sensitive mode. Set the knob at noon and you get a fuzz sound that’s orbiting Planet Tone Bender.
Next up you enter the octave fuzz mode, “pure Hendrix territory” awaits, which is appropriate. As JHS Pedals notes, Wylie actually met Hendrix back in the day. That's where you'll find the octave-up craziness, harmonic overtones, a little organised chaos.
The Coyote is available now, priced £/$149. Check it out at JHS Pedals.
