How is Stephen Using the Boss FZ2

[Zeneth]

I have seen this pedal on many of his rig rundowns, but I have never seen any video on how he uses it on songs. Not one cover have a seen with this pedal, but it seems to be an important piece of his gear. Anyone know how he uses this pedal?

[truthaddict]

It is kind of an expensive pedal these days.  Do you own one or have you watched video reviews of other people showcasing the pedal?

If not, try watching a few reviews of it.  There are some decent reviews on Youtube.  Some of it will sound familiar.

It has a feature, where you can hear the normal tone from the guitar being distorted, but it also adds a slight hint of "one octave above" what is being played.  It gives it a unique synth kind of sound.

Off the top of my head, I can't tell you what Deftones song or what timestamp of the song he uses it.

I think I read that he started using it around the White Pony album. You are probably most likely to hear it on White Pony, Self Titled, or Saturday Night Wrist.  I think he started using more modern amp modeling gear around the time that they recorded Diamond Eyes and Koi No Yokan, so it might not be on those albums as much.

I'll be listening to some of their back catalog the next few weeks.  If I hear it in a song, and remember, I will come back and update the thread.

[Zeneth]

Thanks for the reply. I own one, but only thing that sounds good is as a boost for the style of music. I'll try the feature you mentioned.

[truthaddict]

No problem!  Update us if you find anywhere you can hear that they used it in a song.

[Deftones-argentina]

I own one from when I was a kid back in the day and read steph used it. I think more than anything you can associate it with weird ATF sounding guitarrs like ATF's Bridge and some scratching and weird sounds.

Nowadays I use it to distort bass live & for a few layers in studio work.

[truthaddict]

Premier Guitar on Youtube just released this video 5 days ago, where they interview Steftone about all his gear.  Pretty great video if you are into that kind of stuff.

Starting at 24:09 minutes, he talks about his pedals. 

It does not look like he is using the Boss FZ-2 right now.  But he is using a Boss FZ-1w (Wazacraft).  I am not sure how similar they are.  Maybe it can get very similar sounds?

He mentioned that he uses that shelf of pedals for some of the Saturday Night Wrist songs (Beginning of "Beware").

https://youtu.be/mCjtITqTfgc?si=X4c3RXq62DgJoFHG&t=1449

I played with my FZ-2 some recently... If I set the pedal to "Fuzz 2" setting, and adjust the pickups on my guitar just right, then mute strings with my left hand and strum a rhythm with my right... I can get a sound like what you hear in the Digital Bath bridge at 2:54. Or even some stuff that sounds similar to "Infinite Source".