REUSS RF03 Repeater Fuzz Reuss Musical Instruments

Third generation of the best selling Reuss Repeater Fuzz pedal

Reuss Musical Instruments started ’by accident’ back in 2012, when I shared my homemade Rowland S. Howard pedal at social media. When Reuss grew into a small business, the next new pedal I wanted to make was the Repeater Fuzz. Spacemen 3 is one of my all-time favourite bands, so I wanted to create a pedal to make that sound. And that sound comes from the quartet of built-in effects of vintage 1960s Vox guitars, like the Starstream and Ultrasonic (and more).

The Repeater Fuzz mk. III contains three original 1960s circuits of the Vox guitars (fuzz into treble/bass booster into repeat percussion), very faithfully recreated, plus a powerful clean boost to compensate for the inherent volume-loss of the unmodified old circuits (the treble/bass booster and repeat percussion barely keep unity level and with both on, you want to boost the level to compensate – or just to kick ass).

Some of the old Vox guitars also had a built-in wah effect, which you’d control by a lever at the guitar’s bridge. For obvious reasons, a palm-operated wah is not useful in a guitar pedal sitting on a pedal board, so what I have done with the Repeater Fuzz mk III, is that I made a send/return loop where you can connect a wah into the correct place in the signal chain, between the treble/bass booster and the repeat percussion effect. Now you’ve got the full line of effects of Sonic Boom of Spacemen 3’s Vox Starstream guitar – and a true ’Dreamweapon’ (Sonic Boom would modulate his sound by slowly sweeping the palm wah).

One compromise I had to make to keep the Repeater Fuzz mk III in the compact footprint, was to reduce the number of footswitches. Keep in mind, this is four effects in one small box. There’s obviously no room for four footswitches. What you have is a master bypass footswitch which turns the complete pedal on and off (regardless which individual effects is on or off). Each of the four individual effects have their own true bypass switching. The fuzz, treble/bass booster and clean boost are all assignable via toggle switches, and the idea is that you ’preset’ your sound using these. The repeat percussion effect is footswitchable, as this is the one I believe you are most likely to want to kick in and out while playing.

Pedals shipped from February 2021 features improved power supply filtering. Previous revisions of the Repeater Fuzz has been sensitive to noise from modern ‘switch mode’ power supplies due to the circuits’ raw, true-to-vintage designs (they were designed to work with a battery only), but now we have added advanced filtering to the DC input of pedal, which should be able to filter the noise from most power supplies (still no 100 % guarantee against really crappy power supplies, though).

Reuss Repeater Fuzz features and specifications:

• Four effects in one compact pedal, based on the built-in effects of vintage Vox guitars (Starstream, Ultrasonic etc.)
• Vintage correct ’distortion’ (fuzz), ’treble/bass booster’ and repeat percussion circuits
• Vintage correct ’tin can’ BC108, BC109 and 2N2646 transistors
• Powerful, switchable clean boost circuit compensates for the inherent volume-loss of the vintage circuits
• All four effects can be used individually. One master bypass footswitch turns the complete pedal on and off
• All four effects features mechanical true bypass switching
• Send/return loop to connects a wah pedal (or other effect) in the correct place in the signal chain, to mimic the built-in ’palm wah’ of the old Vox guitars (wah pedal not included – use your own)
• Extremely high build quality. Completely handmade in the European Union
• No SMD parts. Only vintage-style ’through hole’ construction.
• High quality, textured, sparkling powder coat finish in a dark charcoal grey colour.
• UV printed graphics
• High quality Neutrik jacks
• Upgrade quality footswitches (good for at least 30000 stomps)
• Runs on a standard ’Boss-style’ 9V DC ‘negative centre’ guitar pedal power supply or a 9V battery
• Advanced power supply noise filtering circuit at the 9V DC jack
• Compact footprint: 11,9 x 9,4 cm (standard Hammond 1590BB size)
• Ships in a ‘reuss’ box and linen draw-string bag