But they had stustain and fire to their sound. I built up some NPN silicon prototypes and found that they were kind of noisy and very bright. Most of the vintage samples sounded good one day and crappy another day. I wanted to use the PNP germanium circuit, if possible. I had AC128s, NKT275s, BC108Cs, BC109Cs and a bunch of others. Other people sent me transistors to try out. I was able to borrow some vintage FFs from people. I got lots of input from different guitarists and effects collectors all over the country and in England. In mid-1986, I got the word around that we were going to start making FFs again.
I got them working and sold them off for something like $30.00 each. These things were original stock, still in their boxes from the late '60s. Meanwhile, I also came across two boxes containing Dallas Arbiter TremFaces.
So I start to put the wheels in motion for the new FuzzFace reissue. I went to the President and owner of Crest (a wonderful English man named John Lee) and presented the idea. I thought it would be cool to start making them again. It was about a half inch taller than the original FuzzFaces and the transistors were BC109C. It turns out the FF that I was checking out was a reissue from 1976. I cranked it up and I sounded like Hendrix. I tried messing around with the blue FF again and found that by changing the 8.2K resistor to 6.2K, I was able to get a decent sound out of it. I tossed around the idea of the FuzzFace for awhile. I was working for the company that manufactured FuzzFaces in the mid-late '60s! How cool is that! By this time the company had moved on to manufacturing professional high-end mixing consoles and power amps, which they still do today. Dallas Music Industries ( DMI) used to be Dallas Arbiter. My paychecks said Dallas Music Industries on them. It turns out that Crest Audio used to be Dallas Music Industries. From what he wrote, I figured there must be something wrong with the FF that I had tried out. Meanwhile, I found an article in Guitar Player magazine by Craig Anderton which was all about the FuzzFace. I wrote it off as a piece of crap and moved on. If I hit the strings hard, I got a farting noise out of it. I put a battery in the FF and tried it out. The next day I brought in my Fender Strat and Fender Backstage 30 practice amp. It was blue, nearly two inches tall in height and it said Dallas Music Industries on the mouth. One day while I was looking for parts in the one of the stock rooms, I came across a FuzzFace. I was 21 years old and I had the job of QC technician for their Mixing Console lines, which included new Crest Audio consoles and Kelsey consoles. I started working for Crest Audio in fall of 1984.
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