Iridium FX Rock Candy – Prototype Hand-Built Octave/Fuzz (Custom Big Muff)

Iridium FX Rock Candy – Prototype Hand-Built Octave/Fuzz

Designed and hand-built in the USA by me, Rock Candy is a dual-effect octave/fuzz built around a Ram’s Head-inspired Big Muff circuit paired with a Green Ringer-style analog octave-up effect.

While this pedal shares the same overall concept as my Pythagoras build, Rock Candy was intentionally voiced differently, drawing more heavily from the smoother, more vocal character of vintage Ram’s Head-style Muff circuits.

The name is also a tribute to one of my favorite guitarists, Ronnie Montrose.

The octave section is based on the classic Green Ringer topology — a heavily clipped, sputtering analog octave-up effect known for its aggressive harmonic texture and synth-like character. Depending on your guitar and pickup selection, the octave effect is often more pronounced when using the neck pickup.

The two effects can be reordered on the fly, dramatically changing the interaction and overall character of the pedal.

Controls
Volume

Overall output level of the fuzz circuit.

Mids

Adjusts the tonal balance of the tone stack, ranging from:

• fuller, darker tones with stronger midrange presence
  to
• brighter, more scooped classic Muff-style voicings

The effect of this control becomes less pronounced as the Tone control is turned counter-clockwise.

Tone

Classic Big Muff-style tilt EQ control. Highly interactive with the Mids control.

Sustain

Controls the gain and saturation of the fuzz circuit.

Footswitches

Octave

Engages/disengages the Green Ringer-style octave-up effect.

Order

Changes which effect appears first in the signal chain.

The small LEDs indicate the current routing order. One order LED will always remain illuminated whenever the pedal has power.

Running the octave into the fuzz produces a thicker, more saturated texture, while placing the octave after the fuzz emphasizes the octave effect and creates a more aggressive, sputtering character.

Fuzz

Engages/disengages the Muff-style fuzz circuit.

Additional Notes

The octave circuit uses fixed gain and output settings.

All three footswitches are soft-touch and utilize relay-based switching.

Condition

This pedal was built in 2023 and is a prototype from my personal collection. It is fully functional and in very good condition overall, though it spent time on a friend’s pedalboard and shows some cosmetic wear, marks, and light scuffs from normal use.

There is also Velcro attached to the bottom of the enclosure.

Hand-built in small numbers. Prototype unit.