As there seem to be lots of folks here who haven’t been exposed to much fuzz, a few thoughts for you follow. I’m not an expert (at this or anything else musically) but I’ve made a few fuzz pedals based on schematics widely available on the web and it’s an interesting subject. I’ll share my limited experience and I’m sure others more knowledgable than me on the forum can help me learn on the subject too
Like all things guitar, there are huge opinions on which style of fuzz circuit is best (classic fuzz face, muff, tone bender etc). There will then be huge disagreements over exactly which transistors should go in it. If you’ve experienced amp snobbery or tube rolling snobbery you’re in for another treat here as people will pay very big bucks for a vintage germanium transistor. Starting to do so with old BC108 silicones which I remember blowing up regularly at college. There were maybe £0.08 back then. Not so much now. Wish I’d stashed a bunch
One of the the highly regarded fuzz makers is Analogman (the guys who make the King of Tone distortion). It’s worth looking here to see the huge amount of options available in terms of ‘what transistor do you want? https://www.buyanalogman.com/Analog_Man_Sun…am-sun-face.htm as it will give you some idea about the properties associated with germanium and silicone (which in a nutshell is germanium is gentler, silicone harsher but that is an unfair simplification). Generally speaking, Silicone reacts more quickly to a given input and therefore can be ‘more accurate’. Germanium takes its time so potentially softens things. A bit like ‘transistor amp vs valve (tube) amp. Again a simplification but you get the idea
Keep in mind with the above website that the Sun Face fuzz is basically a classic ‘fuzz face’ circuit. About as simple as these things get. The differences you’ll find (beyond how you set it / your guitar / your amp and how it’s dialled in) will come from the transistors fitted from this list. And as you’ll see, even the germanium transistors all have very different descriptions given! When I’ve made fuzz in the past, it’s like the lottery when you buy old germanium transistors because they are all, to some extent, imperfect. Get two identical models and they’ll probably be entirely different in terms of how they work. And they’ll be different again on a hot day. That was (and is) the charm. But the style of fuzz you can make is very much determined by what you can get hold of. Silicone was more accurate / more reliable / more consistent / cheaper to make / more temperature stable etc which is why it typically replaced germanium in the fuzz circuits as time when on.
I think that’s why it makes such sense to have a control on the Kemper fuzz that goes from germanium to silicone.... Extrmely soft germanium at one end and extremely harsh silicone at the other. All the space in the middle for the huge variations. Very cool.
One thing I’ve seen requested here is ‘fuzz factory’ style presets. This fuzz was made famous by Muse on ‘plug in baby’ - you can get wild oscillation and weirdness. I’ve made one of these too and, whilst I like it for a couple of things, it’s a nightmare to use if you’re not familiar. I think if Kemper did implement this, it would need to be a different fx module.
The fuzz factory has 5 controls as opposed to the 2 on a fuzz face. One of these is to reduce the battery voltage (which makes the circuit unstable). Some fuzz addicts seek out slightly dead batteries in their regular fuzz pedals to do the same thing. I did mention there was mojo involved :). The other fuzz factory controls are altering the voltage fed to a couple of different points of the circuit if I recall correctly. The good news, if you get it dialled in right, is you can make it do weird and wonderful things. The bad news is that you can get yourself into trouble - all the controls interact and, if you’re wanting a ‘useful’ tone (subjective I know) compared with ‘this thing is making noise and I can’t stop it’ then you have to stick within certain parameters. Traditional fuzz pedals only allow you to modify settings that don’t breach the design of the circuit so therefore they always work as opposed to oscillating. That’s why I think fuzz factory style fuzz would need a separate fx type within the Kemper - if it allowed you to ‘break the circuit’ in this way, it would be more difficult to do the normal dirty stuff. Whilst I like the concept of adding a fuzz factory, I personally like the new fuzz as it is - I can play to all extremes without oscillation. Well, I think so - I need to play more But if CK wanted to add another fuzz type (like doing the OCD separate to the Kemper Drive) with a dying battery control etc then that would be cool too.
Thats enough from me - hope this was interesting to someone out there