Mojo Hand FX Zephyr Fuzz Review

A couple of months ago I had the opportunity to grab a Mojo Hand Fx Zephyr Fuzz pedal in a limited edition finish. I've been curious about this pedal ever since it was released. I like the demos I've heard and Mojo Hand seems like they keep knocking it out of the park with each new release. Their Iron Bell and Colossus pedals are the all the rave for Muff and Gilmour fanatics and their Rook Overdrive is extremely popular.  So first impression of the Zephyr... It's Amazing! If your a player who likes to use your volume knob and vary your pick attack for different sounds you owe it to yourself to grab one of these pedals right away.

The Zephyr is based on the old Sam Ash/ Astrotone fuzz that was made famous by the late great Tommy Bolin. Tommy Bolin made a name for himself in the 70's playing with The James Gang, Deep Purple and had a great solo career and showed up as a guest on a number of albums. It's really an overdrive that gets a little fuzzy. Like many of today's boutique pedal builders the Zephyr is extremely touch sensitive feeling very amp like. You can set your amp up clean or just breaking up and get a lot of great tones just by changing pickups, pick attack or using your fingers. The Zephyr plays well with buffers, humbuckers and of course single coils so if you haven't like fuzzes before you should give this pedal a shot.

There is a lot of boost available in the level control so you could even use this pedal just to push a clean amp into drive but then you might miss the best part. The drive in this thing is amazing. As fuzzes go it's not the extreme crazy fuzz of a fuzz face or muff. It's kind of a well behaved gentleman's fuzz. Not that it can't get a little nasty when pushed to the extreme but for me at least it's best tones are where the Overdrive gets a bit Fuzzy. The tone knob is interesting too. I found that this is where the versatility lies you can turn the tone just a bit and find a whole new world of sounds to explore.

If your a pedal-aholic (and I'm guessing you are if your reading this) it can be a real challenge to limit your self to just a few pedals. There are so many great sounds available at your feet. But every so often you should try and challenge yourself and knock it down to just a couple of drives. So here is what I did. I started by just experimenting with just the amp and the Zephyr. I set the amp to a clean tone that would break up when pushed. Then added the Zephyr. And for a few weeks that was it. Nothing else. Scary right? But armed with this simple combination and my strat I was able to coax an amazing array of tones out of it. Even with the pedal still on, rolling back the volume knob cleans up the sound beautifully. Over time I've added a delay and a wah. Depending on what I'm working on I might use a Chorus or Phaser. I've played around with stacking another overdrive with it and it stacks amazingly well, but more and more I find myself just using the Zephyr and the amp. This little pedal has kept me in sonic bliss for a few months, I've grown as a player because of it and that's not something I think I can say about any other pedal.

NOTE: Mojo Hand has since stopped making this awesome pedal so grab a Zephyr while you still can.

This review was completely unsolicited, I received no compensation for it and all views and opinions are my own.