Aion Electronics Flare Quick Start Manual

Flare
Fuzz Factory

Overview

Controls & Usage
• Drive controls the amount of fuzz, equivalent to an overdrive's gain control. This also turns into
something of a feedback pitch control when the Stability is reduced.
• Level is the output level of the effect.
• Comp changes the attack. It is heavily affected by the Stability control.
• Stability reduces the +9V supply to change the bias of the whole circuit, changing the overall character
of all of the knobs and throwing it into oscillation.
• Gate turns off the transistor when the signal is below the threshold. Useful for creating glitchy sounds.
• Soft reduces the gain of the first boost stage, which rounds out the fuzz a bit and gives it more of an
overdrive character.
• Tone is a classic SWTC (Stupidly Wonderful Tone Control) appended to the end of the circuit to allow the
treble content to be tamed a bit.
• Body is an input capacitor blend that fades between a 100n and 10uF capacitor. This increases the bass
and thickens up the effect.

Modifications

The three additional knobs can all be bypassed if you want to just build a classic Fuzz Factory.
• Body can be left off without using any jumpers; just include C2 but not C8.
• Soft can be omitted by using a 220k resistor for R7 and jumpering pads 2 and 3 which are marked
"BYPASS" on the back side of the PCB.
• Tone can be bypassed by running a jumper between pads 1 and 3 marked "BYPASS" on the back.
Leave off C6.
FUZZ FACTORY / FLARE FUZZ
The Flare is a clone of the ZVEX Fuzz Factory, a really interesting
little box that lets you create everything from a really thick but
musical fuzz to some messed-up oscillations. The Fuzz Factory
is essentially a classic Fuzz Face with a LPB-1 booster in front of
it, but with the twist that it uses PNP transistors running on +9V
rather than -9V like a standard Fuzz Face.
This is not a user-friendly pedal by any means—the knobs are
very interactive, and there are a lot of settings that don't work, but
if you start with some default knob settings you can get a good
feel for what it's capable of.
The Fuzz Factory is notable for being custom-built directly into
the guitars of Matthew Bellamy of Muse. He uses it for his main
drive tone as well as for feedback & oscillation purposes.
Fuzz Factory Project Link
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