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".

[guitarguy]

Hi there - guitar pedal nerd and huge Stef fan here; saw this post and figured I'd make an account on the forum since it seems there's a couple fellow guitar gear nerds here. Also, keep in mind that I'm not an insider and this stuff is my opinion/guesswork, not verified fact, though I do generally know what I'm talking about some of the time (and I was at Tone Tailors when Bob Bradshaw was re-doing Stef's rig in 2018, though I didn't touch it or anything).

Stef uses (used?) the FZ-2 in its "Boost" mode almost exclusively, for two purposes:

• Driving the input of his preamp (an ADA MP-1 on Adrenaline/ATF; a Marshall JMP-1 on White Pony/Deftones/SNW).
• EQ shaping.

For the most part I can't really point out a specific section of a Deftones song and be like "This is FZ-2!" because it's just a general part of his tone shaping, not an "effect." There are precisely two exceptions to this that I believe are pure FZ-2: the intro to "7 Words" and the intro/pre-verse(?) parts in "Street Carp." These are almost certainly just the FZ-2 into a clean tone, in boost mode, with the gain dimed and some telephone-esque bandpass filtering.

I think one possible use of the FZ-2 in Fuzz 1 mode is the chorus of "Xerxes," as a supplemental "thickener" track that's panned very slightly to the right. I seem to recall once hearing a bit of Fuzz 2 mode somewhere, but I'm struggling to recall exactly where. In general though, I don't think he used/uses the fuzz modes much if at all. Pretty much all of his fuzzed-out tones are very obviously a Z.Vex Fuzz Factory (it has a very distinct, identifiable sound).

The EQ on the FZ-2 is pretty unique in that it's not the typical Baxandall EQ that most pedals with Bass/Treble controls have. It's actually two distinct active EQ circuits - one a gyrator (the Bass control) and the other a shelving filter (Treble). The Bass control is a half-octave peak/notch bell filter centered at 100hz with +- 12dB of gain. The Treble control cutoff frequency is around 3.2khz with a wide ramp reaching as low as 200hz, also with +- 12dB of gain. Most interesting is the phase shifting characteristics of these EQ controls. The Bass control has a very steep phase shift that has a positive peak at 75hz and a negative valley at 150hz (above 50%; inverse for below 50%), giving it a more "chewy" feel as it's turned up but also preventing low-end muddiness by decoupling the low end from the midrange. The Treble control has a positive phase "hump" centered around 1.5khz (above 50%; inverse for below 50%) that gives it a very "forward" and attack-heavy feel when turned up but also preventing the typical "swarm of bees" harshness in mid-scooped tones by effectively "lagging" the high end behind the midrange. As a result, when both are boosted you get a very harmonically resonant tone that tends to "fight itself" less (particularly in the low end and "presence" range and also helps "push forward" mid-scooped tones that would normally get buried in a mix.

You can play around with the tone circuit here to get an idea.

I think this EQ is a lot of the reason why Stef sounds the way he does. The wide range of the Treble control combined with the Boost mode driving the input gives Stef's heavy riffing tone that articulate and cutting tone but without getting too harsh or ice-pick-y, and the narrow Bass boost gives it a thick punch without over-competing with Chi or getting boomy. A good way to hear this by comparison is to go listen to "Bury Me" by Smashing Pumpkins (from Gish; an IMO quintessential ADA MP-1 tone) and then listen to "Lhabia" from ATF, specifically focusing on the punch and pick attack of the chugged/palm-muted bits and not the actual guitar tone/sound. Notice how "Lhabia" has a more defined attack on the top end and bit of "gut-punch" from a speaker moving air than "Bury Me" does? That's the FZ-2 EQ making a difference.

Adrenaline's guitar tone is over-shaped by (IMO) bad mic placement and room acoustics for (what sounds like) Celestion G12T-75 speakers, so it's less readily apparent (the aforementioned "7 Words" example notwithstanding). I get the impression he was using some more aggressive settings - specifically, a healthy chunk of Bass boost and a moderate Treble boost - and this was EQ'd back out at the board when mixing. I'm not sure if a raw guitar stem from this session is out there, but if one sees the light of day I bet we'll find it's a very raw and harsh tone with a steep mid scoop from 150hz to 600hz, softening to 5khz, and then a high-end roll-off at 6khz+ with a steep low-end roll-off from 80hz on down. And then I bet we'll find that comparing it to the album version shows the mixed version had a highpass filter on it set to around 150-200hz and a pretty narrow-Q mid boost somewhere around 300hz or so (right where the G12T-75s also have a dip in frequency response; just sayin').

White Pony's use is more subtle, and I think he may have double-tracked with some opposing settings on the Treble knob: one with a slight boost to add edge (but much less than that on ATF), and one with a pretty heavy cut to make it effectively act as a mid boost, and then blended them together to taste. I think this is why there's some differences in his heavy riffing tone across the songs, particularly in the high end and low-mids - different amounts of each track blended in. However, if you ever play a JMP-1 by itself you'll quickly realize how not-White Pony it sounds on its own (the JMP-1 has a very different and distinct sound for all that it was intended to be a "rack JCM 800") and I think the FZ-2 is a big part as to why. In general though, I believe the biggest difference in his use on this album is he was more conservative with his high end boosting and he used much less Gain/input driving as the JMP-1 can get quite fuzzy at high gain settings (and I think he literally maxed his gain setting on most presets). There's also significantly more Chino, so there's that.

The self-titled album's tone is, I'm 90% certain, the FZ-2 EQ cranked with the boost gain basically off and the output level pushing around 2 o'clock or so. Pretty much all of Stef's tone on that record has a noticeable high-end boost around 5khz and a big ol' punch of 120-130hz with a wide mid scoop weighted more towards low-mids - and that's precisely what the EQ curve of the FZ-2 is when you boost both knobs. I bet if you got raw single tracks of Stef's guitar from Adrenaline and Deftones, and added a ton of short-decay room reverb to the latter, they'd sound very similar.

On SNW there's much less FZ-2 shaping going on I think, and most of it was used in a similar fashion to White Pony. "Rats!Rats!Rats!" is a notable exception, which features that same "boost both" tone used on Deftones. As I mentioned earlier, "Xerxes" is the one place I think a fuzz mode was used (specifically Fuzz 1). Outside of that I think Stef just quite plainly didn't play much on this record, and most of the tonal differences are simply due to there being more Chino in the mix than usual.

I think Diamond Eyes was his last real use of the FZ-2, and it's very prevalent on that record in the "boost both" usage. In fact, I think this record - and in particular "Rocket Skates" - is the best example of exactly what the FZ-2's EQ can do. Despite a very heavily mid-scooped tone and hard left-right panning, Stef's guitar is front-and-center in the mix when normally a tone like that would immediately get buried under cymbal wash and bass. It's also one of his most articulate-sounding performances, with razor-sharp pick attack under palm muting.

From Koi No Yokan on he's used an Axe FX II. Interestingly, I have his patches from Koi No Yokan as well as the exact same model Axe FX II unit with the exact same firmware version (though ironically this one was used by Sevendust - a story for another day, perhaps) and he seems to be using parametric EQs to emulate the same sort of EQ shaping the FZ-2 does. For example, here's his PEQ settings for his direct-to-board tone for "Swerve City":

• A flat shelf EQ at 183.3hz with 1.35dB of gain.
• A flat shelf EQ at 8.345khz with -2.55dB of gain.
• A notch EQ at 307hz, 0.621Q, with -0.50 of gain.
• A shelf EQ at 1.952khz, 0.515Q, with 1.1dB of gain.
• A notch EQ at 561.6hz, 0.707Q, with -0.05dB of gain (inaudible, but the non-default frequency and Q settings implies he was playing with that frequency at some point).

He also has a Tube Screamer model at the front. This creates an EQ curve with a similar shape as the general EQ curve of the "boost both" FZ-2 EQ stack, but it's not quite right either (most notably in the sub-100hz range). It also doesn't emulate the phase shifting of the FZ-2, and I think that's more important than you'd think. In fact, I wonder if this is a big part of why Stef has never been truly happy with his attempts at a digital rig in a live setting despite being fine with it when recording - he's just not cutting through the mix in the same way. If I ever got the chance to talk to Stef I'd tell him to try turning off the EQs and Tube Screamer in the Axe FX and put his FZ-2 in front of it like he did with his MP-1 and JMP-1, and/or tell him I could probably help him get a bit closer with his EQ settings - and also ask him if I can have one of his spare non-reverse-headstock SC-607s to complete my Stef Carpenter guitar collection, pretty please with a sugar-free cherry on top.

Also, while actual Boss FZ-2 pedals are ludicrously expensive (the pedal market is stupid), the Behringer SF300 Super Fuzz is a near-identical clone of it (literally the only difference is that it uses surface-mount components so it has less noise - people who say "they sound different" are hearing with their eyes) and you can buy one for around $30. The housing is plastic and a bit shit, but I've had one on my board for the last two years of gigging and haven't had any issues.

Anyway, that was more than anyone probably has cared or will ever care about Stef's FZ-2, so sorry for the wall o' text. I just really like nerding out about guitar gear and as I once mentioned in a Reddit post I think Stef is a massively underrated guitarist who is actually extremely skilled and meticulous about his playing and tone.