Inside you, there are two coyotes – which one will win?
It's not easy being a lone wolf – or lone coyote. You watch the world build up, but the city life ain't for you. You've got the dusty trails, the music of the wild winds, and the company of the endless horizon. You might not be one for the community of your peers, but who can blame you when you've got the whole moon to yourself?
It's this lone wolf mentality that drove so many effect pedal pioneers forward in the earliest days of stompboxes. It might seem like an impossibly long time ago that effect pedals were newfangled things, but there was in fact a time when such was the case. Today, we're talking about a new effect that celebrates the legacy of one of guitar pedals' oldest, most unsung lone wolves – or coyotes.
This is the JHS Pedals Coyote Fuzz.
(I Can't Get No)
Introducing the JHS Pedals Coyote Fuzz
A true historian of effect pedals if there ever were one, Josh Scott has done more than his fair share of reviving classic effects for the modern era. If anything, he's gone above and beyond with excavating designs that never saw the light of day! Some of his brand JHS Pedals' most recent releases have been a prime example of this practice in motion with their Double Dragon analog octave effect and their 424 Gain Stage tape recorder preamp. What's more, JHS has had their hand in much bigger claims to effect fame like the Big Muff 2 designed in collaboration with Electro-Harmonix from a never-before-seen schematic from the 1970s.
All of this to say, if you're looking to study up on the history of effect pedals and all the bends in the road that have made the effect pedal world what it is today, JHS is a great place to start.
A seemingly ever-ongoing project for JHS is giving the spotlight to circuits and builders that never got the recognition in their time they deserved. This project today lands with the Coyote Fuzz and its reclusive creator, Glenn Wyllie. After first hearing the legendary Maestro fuzz tone on the Stones' "Satisfaction" as a teenager, Wyllie began a lifelong love affair with effect circuits. In his time a certified pioneer of effect pedals, Wyllie met Jimi Hendrix several times during the guitarist's tenure in New York City's Greenwich Village – experiences that surely informed his artistic outlook on his DIY designs.
Wyllie spent his later life etching his own DIY pedal boards in Appalachian North Carolina. The builder since passed in 2014, but his designs have certainly left in impact on those who played them – case in point, the pedal on the docket today. The Coyote Fuzz is truly something for the fuzz nerds of the world* to revel in. Let's talk about it.
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Bark at the Moon
JHS Pedals Coyote Fuzz Design and Controls
With the Coyote Fuzz, we're treated to a truly fresh fuzz philosophy. The Coyote Fuzz is JHS's recreation of Wyllie's Moonrock Fuzz, an incredibly rare circuit in his time and today. Wyllie's circuits were never mass-produced, so the Coyote acts as something of a revival and a warm welcome. Without further ado...
JHS Pedals Coyote Fuzz Effect Modes
The JHS Coyote Fuzz utilizes a unique mode-select sweep knob to deliver three awesome fuzz effects. Distinct from other fuzz effect circuits, the Coyote skips around rotary switches and other frivolities in favor of a blissfully simple one-dial sweep. The Coyote's second dial establishes three zones of fuzz that really need no other explanation once you're in on them. Let's run them down.
"If you've tried every fuzz on the market and you're still looking for the one you haven't played — you're the Coyote. You're the fuzz scavenger. We found something for you." - JHS Pedals
SwellThe main event, the pièce de résistance of this pedal, we have Swell. Inspired by Wyllie's Moonrock Fuzz, Swell introduces an incredibly unique fuzz experience based around gating and effect swells. Pick a note and the entire effect ducks only to bloom back in a marvelously fuzzy and woolly way. Very touch sensitive, Swell does quite a bit to inform your playing as the fuzz blossoms and withers in relation to your picking patterns. We'll talk more about the tone of this effect in a minute, but for now, this is your main course – and what a main course it is.
FuzzPicture a fuzz. Here it is. Moving clockwise, the Fuzz zone of the Coyote fills out the character of the distortion to land at a simple, tried-and-true fuzz effect. Mostly reminiscent of "Bender" fuzzes, this straight and simple fuzz plays an excellent companion to the more off-the-wall Swell mode.
OctaveWe can't talk about '60s fuzzes without talking about the Octavia, huh? This distinctly octave-flavored fuzz hearkens to Wyllie's encounters with Hendrix and it shows. Bright, heated, and sure to turn to scrambled eggs before long if you inch the dial all the way clockwise, this is classic Hendrix Octavia fuzz fire in action all consolidated to two knobs.
Going Faster Miles an Hour
JHS Pedals Coyote Fuzz Tones
With the Coyote, as you can imagine, there aren't a lot of detours to take. This whole effect is inspired by a time in guitar gear where the tone was all in the fingers, after all! If you're the true kind of "set-and-forget" guitarist who stomps the box and doesn't look down again until you're ready to get off the stage, the Coyote will likely be for you.
Across the Coyote's fuzz effect sweep, you get your three distinct modes, but within their zones, you get quite a few sweet spots to arrive at interesting fuzz mixes. Place the mode dial all the way counterclockwise in the Swell zone and you get the Coyote's truest experience. This is where your fuzz swells will be the most drastic, the most gated, the most dramatic. Wyllie's gated, swelling fuzz is truly begging to be splashed on your most melodramatic solo with its searing sustain that gives you plenty of body to work with.
On the opposite end of the dial, at the maximum end of the Coyote's Octave mode, the effect shows a common quirk that can be found elsewhere in the sweep. The Coyote is not by definition a monophonic fuzz, that being said, its tones* may sometimes fool you.
By their nature these octave-based fuzzes have a tendency to get lost in the sauce when they're cranked. Hit a chill couple notes in a sequence, and hey, we're doing great, we're having a day at the beach. Strum a chord and the Coyote gets melted fairly quickly. This is not at all a bug. By the nature of these analog fuzz designs, this messy quirk is just another stepping stone to the kind of charming debauchery you're sure to fall in love with before long. It's a fuzz, how clean do you want it?
Particularly those found in its Swell and Octave zones
Silence is GoldenSomething certainly worth noting about the JHS Coyote Fuzz is another quirk about its faithful, vintage design. If you're a volume-knob warrior, if you get a lot of your tone and playability out of working your guitar's volume knob at different levels, the Coyote Fuzz may not be for you. Ruthlessly authentic, the Coyote's fuzzes perform their absolute best with your guitar at full volume. Anything less and the Coyote's fuzz effects might drastically drop out. This is all by design. Should you feel your freest when you're rolling your Strat's volume knob backward for a little more tonal nuance, maybe give the Coyote a test run first. Alternatively, if you're looking for a fuzz that can operate essentially without a footswitch, where it all but disappears when your volume knob isn't at its maximum, the Coyote is absolutely worth checking out.
JHS Pedals Coyote Fuzz Further Functions
As you can imagine, and as you can probably see, the Coyote doesn't have a ton going on in terms of controls and connections. Blissfully simple, the Coyote features a true bypass footswitch and a standard nine-volt center negative power supply connection. We can probably safely assume that if obscure '60s fuzz effects are your cup of tea, external TRS control connections and the like probably aren't front-of-mind for you for a pedal like the Coyote. Plug it in, start playing. What else do you need to worry about?
JHS Pedals Coyote Fuzz Final Thoughts
A true vintage piece in the modern day, the Coyote is something special. In a time of essentially prehistory for guitar pedals, you really had to have something good to stand out. The pool of pedals in circulation was smaller, but boy howdy if the stakes were higher. It's no secret that even up to today we've carried over plenty of design fundamentals from the 1960s. There's still plenty of fans of those original circuits – look at the secondhand market for original '60s effects. Throughout all that noise, it's great to see a truly unsung hero of that time get the limelight, if all these years later. The JHS Coyote is a love letter to the fuzz pedal nerds of history, but in a different way than you might think.
It's not easy being a lone wolf – or coyote – but it is rewarding. Set out on your own with this JHS creation and see what we mean.
