Hello Gearheads! Today I’ve got another fantastic fuzz to share with you… the Chase Tone Fuzz Fella Teal BC109c! I’ve had the luxury of checking out a few of Kyle Chase’s great fuzzy creations over the years, check back on past Gearheads Features for both the Fuzz Fella Blue BC108C and the ‘68 Red Velvet Fuzz… and this newest creation is right in great company!
Kyle Chase builds incredible sounding and feeling pedals, he has a great ear in how he voices these circuits and if you haven’t had the chance to check out something from his line - I highly encourage it! Not only are they extremely toneful, versatile and musical… they’re quite affordable! I’ve mentioned this about a few other builders, but I’m just not sure how Kyle puts these out to market at the prices he charges! Great parts, hand built and wired in USA to boot. If fuzz isn’t your things, his Secret Preamp is a very good tone shaper in the vein of an Echoplex Preamp. Easily one of the best in the market.
The Fuzz Fella Teal BC109C in Kyle’s words is a ‘Desert Island Drive’ capable of merging the world of gnarly fuzz and singing overdrive. I found all this to be true in working on this feature. I found the Teal Fella to sit really well in all those tonal camps, largely in part to it’s tone shaping feature set. It worked fantastically with all the instruments and amplifiers I used it with and like any great Fuzz Face circuit, it cleaned up amazingly. Most often when a Fuzz pedal, especially a Fuzz Face circuit employs the types of tone shaping controls the Teal Fella does, shortcomings end up showing themselves in how natural the sound of the pedal is. Not the case in any way here - I was very impressed.
The Feature set offers the usual Volume and Gain but with the addition of mini trimmers for Midrange, Feel and Bass. These mini trimmers offered the biggest and most useful alterations for me. I found that they all interact with each other to create a fuller picture of the tone you’re trying to achieve, whether it be thicker, thinner or more/less aggressive. The kicker is that while they all share a relationship, it’s not detrimental to each control to make changes. Some pedals often sound great if you set them in a certain way but then if you need to make a small change, they end up sounding artificial and terrible. Not the case here!
I found the Teal Fella to be a great option for folks who never really got along with the Fuzz Face, or want to dabble in Fuzz pedals but don’t want to spend $1000 to find out they don’t really like that sound. It’s not the price margin either that makes this a perfect pedal in that regard - it’s how well it can integrate with your rig and ultimately what sound you’re looking for. I easily found gnarly thick Fuzz Face tones as much as I found gritty and smoother overdrive tones. Rolling back my guitar’s volume knob at any point yielded a variety of clean to edge of breakup tones. Plainly put, regardless of price… this is a really great pedal.
In the demo below I used the Teal Fella on all the guitars and even on some bass parts. Any clean tones you hear are with the volume knob rolled back. It responded to both humbucking and single coil pickups as well as both British and American style amplifiers. I used a ‘76 50w Marshall JMP and a Two Rock Traditional Clean. I’m highly impressed with this latest fuzz from Chase Tone, it might honestly be my favorite from them to date. I absolutely encourage you to grab one of these and find out yourself… slap that pedal on a board and you’re ready to go!
Thanks for checking this Gearheads Feature on the Chase Tone Fuzz Fella Teal BC109C. If you’d like to learn more about Kyle and his work please do check out these sites for more information.
https://chasetone.com/fuzz-fella-teal-bc109c/
Until next time Gearheads, please take a moment to Like, Subscribe & Share this Feature and I’ll see you all very soon!