Fuzz plugins?

[zerocrossing]

If you are plugging a passive pickup into a fuzz box, there’s an interaction between the two that can’t be replaced with software. That doesn’t mean that you can’t use a plugin and get excellent results. My main guitar has active pickups, so I don’t get that push-pull interaction anyway, even when I had a Fuzzfactory or Cock Fight. Plugins are just as good for me, but consider my situation.

[MattR321]

I find Fuzz is one of the most difficult things to get right in the box. Even a cheap 30$ fuzz pedal will sound better (in my eyes)

that's been my experience too. fuzz sits in a weird place because so much of what makes a real pedal work is the interaction between the transistors and the input impedance of whatever's coming in. that circuit context is really hard to model statically. the ones that actually nail it tend to be doing some kind of reactive/dynamic modelling rather than just clipping curves.

Its not just fuzz. The more I update my chain and processes, the more I actually feel that analogue is adding tons of great stuff when it comes to distortion. I got a cheap Joyo Orange preamp and using just a bit of distortion into the DAW and then using an amp sim gives me a lot better results.

[Ah_Dziz]

All the fuzz circuits I've ever made (6 or 7) have a buffered input so the impedance change does very little outside of a change in gain. Outside of that they are mostly clippers and some single pole filters for tone shaping. My advice would be to just play around with a waveshaper if you want very heavy distortion in your daw. If you want a very specific pedal sound it's probably worth just grabbing the pedal or making a clone.

[simon.a.billington]

Actually, the Waves MDMX Distortion pedals come with a Fuzz that also has a an optional Octaver, EQ and Dynamic control. I'm assuming the latter is pre-distortion allowing you to sculpt how your sound hits the circuit for better control of your overall sound.

I've used it a couple of times, it's quite flexible for a fuzz.