This is by far the most ridiculous fuzz I've ever used. It mostly does oscillation, synth sounds, bleep bloops, octave, glitch sounds, but if you have enough self-hatred, you can milk a couple of normal fuzz/overdrive tones out of it.
It sounds awful. It hurts your ears at the quietest volumes. Anyone with the slightest bit of self respect would never use it. I give it a 9/10. It's wonderful.
It sounds very similar to Dwarfcraft's The Great Destroyer, which misuses the same hex inverter.
Unfortunately, there's really no way to predict how it's going to behave. The knobs behave seemingly illogically, and a tiny movement of any parameter can completely changes the sound. My main concern, without a buffer, an accidental touch of your guitar's volume or tone can completely throw everything off. I love it, and it's a lot of fun, but after using it for three or four shows, it's just too unpredictable. Running it after a buffer is essential live, but every night, a knob would get nudged, and it would take me five minutes to find the gated fuzz sound I wanted to use again. Still, it's a completely unique sound, and I don't want to turn anyone off. A well behaving pedal will not be able to do this much evil.
I use a Boss TU-2 at the beginning of my signal chain, but for buffer-less folks, I think it would be worthwhile to add a switchable buffer circuit to smooth things out, and maybe even a trimpot for input attenuation. Input impedance can control the oscillation, so being able to bypass the buffer would still allow you to play sweet theremin solos with your guitar's volume and tone knob.
Really any buffer will do, since the pedal just going to sound like robot Satan eating photocopiers. I'll update when I add one to mine.
This is simple op amp buffer from the always lovely Beavis Audio. That'll work fine.
Two versions of the 4049 are suggested, the CD4049UBE and the MC14049BCPG. Pick the UBE if you want it to be more like a fuzz pedal, pick the BCPG if you want more of a noise maker. I'm using the 4049UBE, although the near-perfect bird noises of the BCPG are tempting.
Easy, clean build with PCB mounted pots. Although, the board is a couple millimeters too narrow, so the top row of pots are slightly too cramped. Not a big deal. PCB available from Musicpcb.com here. Great stuff!
Schematic from Tone God
Polished.
Video demo soon.