Fuzz Friday!!! The First Clone of the Boss FZ-3

I'm still working my way through various Boss clones, and I still have several more to do for the "first wave" of clones. The first wave has been pretty much based on AionFX boards, but there there will be a "second wave" where I go a bit further afield. For this particular build, I'm using the Aion Argent clone of the fairly rare Boss FZ-3 fuzz pedal. Initially produced in 1997 as a successor to the FZ-2 Hyper Fuzz (a far more complex build that I posted earlier this month), it was discontinued after a couple of years. Like many other discontinued Boss pedals, this one eventually developed a small cult following including  John Frusciante (Red Hot Chili Peppers) and Billy Corgan (Smashing Pumpkins). Despite their relative rarity, original units can be had for between $200 and $300. AionFX is apparently the first company to offer an accurate PCB of the unit as previous traces had some key errors limiting functionality.

This project is one of the few Boss effects pedals I've seen rated as "easy" by AionFX (the SP-1 Spectrum I recently completed being one other that comes to mind). As you can see from the board above, it's relatively tight, but smaller than the boards of many of the other Boss pedals. It also has a high transistor count  with a total of eight, but only one is the SMD version of the original 2SK-184GR transistor on the adaptor board - the others are all 2N5088s. There are no diodes on the main board, only the Schottky diode on the bypass board. The only slightly strange part in the BOM is the Tone potentiometer is a W100K taper (though you can substitute a B taper as the center portion of a W taper is roughly linear).

Overall the build was straightforward and the pedal fired up with no issues the first time. It's definitely a strong fuzz pedal, though the level of fuzz can be dialed in where you want it to be. The tone knob works just like a Big Muff tone knob allowing more bass or treble. On the lower strings the fuzz effect can get a bit muddy (especially for power chords), so you have to watch this one a bit.  

As with my other recent Boss clones, the enclosure resembles the original right down to the knobs. I may make changes to these enclosures if I ever get requests to build these for sale, and I have a couple of "ideas" along those lines. Regardless, this was a fun evening build, and it's a really cool little pedal. Now I'm going to have to dig out some Smashing Pumpkins and try to figure out where Billy used this thing.