Lovetone's Big Cheese is a revered fuzz box from the '90s, used by guitarists, producers, and engineers from U2's The Edge to Steve Albini.
In the middle of a new video looking at his all-time favorite clones, JHS' Josh Scott announced today the release of his brand-new clone of this classic Big Cheese circuit: the JHS Cheese Ball.
Josh says in the video, "I meticulously replicated every finite detail of this original 1995 Lovetone Big Cheese and did it with precise detail, and didn't trust any of the currently available online schematics."
While JHS may be known for their creative re-conceptualizations of classic pedal types, the Cheese Ball is as exacting a replica as the brand could create. According to JHS, "The Cheese Ball has your standard Volume, Gain, and Tone knobs found on most distortion fuzz boxes, but comes with an extra mode selector knob that gives you four different overall tone and gain selections." These modes includes a mid-scooped buzz, a mid-boost sound, and a gated fuzz.
Original Big Cheeses are hard to come by—and expensive when you can find them.
According to a May 2019 article in Guitarist, Lovetone's Dan Coggins and Vlad Naslas named the original Big Cheese after the song from Nirvana's debut Bleach. The circuit was later combined with the company's Brown Source overdrive to make the large-format Cheese Source, which are a little easier to find though still expensive on the used market.
As is evident in the video above, Josh and JHS have basically written a love letter to Lovetone in the form of this pedal.
Watch the full video to get more on the history of this and other clones. And click here to find your Cheese Ball on Reverb now.