The Black Keys Fan Lounge Forum

is there any articles or info out there on the gear they used to record the Big Come Up album? I love the raw sounds.

I've heard a bunch about him using that amp... wonder if he used it exclusively though?

No articles that I can recall but from a close friend of the band I was told he used a 60's Ampeg Gemini II amplifier (15 inch speaker) and when you hear fuzz pedal it is primarily the Maestro MFZ-1 (aka MFZ-1a). Not sure which axe/axes were used.

I read that they used various mics including some cheap ass ones from Radio Shack. I've also read and been told that it was recorded digitally. Some kind of digital 8 or 16 track device.

Not to my knowledge. Maestro is most famous for the Keith Richards Rolling Stones "Satisfaction" riff fuzz. But that was a completely different unit, the FZ-1, which is very similar to the FZ-1A but both of those are nothing like the MFZ-1, which is the huge weird looking pedal that we all know and love because of The Big Come Up.

The only place I've seen the MFZ-1 referred to as the MFZ-1A is on youtube and on message boards and such so it's probably just a mistake - glad you pointed that out.

But yeah, the FZ-1 and FZ-1A are germanium transistor fuzzes and that's the whole "Satisfaction" fuzz tone. The MFZ-1 (TBCU fuzz) does not use any transistors at all. It's a completely different style of fuzz circuit.