The Fuzz Face is a difficult beast to tame. It's sound is fat, sloppy and politically incorrect. The radio frequency interference is so strong that you would think it came right out of "This is Spinal Tap". The modern incarnations of this pedal sound vastly different from the 60's versions. Today's reissues are thinner sounding and have less gain. The Dunlop edition is colored due to circuity added in an effort to remove radio pickup.

When the guitar's volume control is fully open, the effect is very smooth and fat due to the extremely low input impedance which cuts off most of the high frequencies. Rolling down the pot to halfway brightens up the sound considerably and is good for rhythm playing.

You should never use a buffer [4] or any Boss, Ibanez, or any other active (Fet) switching pedal before the Fuzz Face, since this will drastically alter the tone and gain . Avoid the newer Dunlop buffered wahs as well. Older Cry Baby and Vox wahs, however, need to be modified in order to operate properly when used together with the Fuzz Face.