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A black upright pedal at a three-quarter angle, with MORIA written across the top in blue marker in blocky capitals. Four black knurled knobs with silver caps and white pointer lines stand on the face in a staggered pattern, two upper and two lower. A small round LED bezel sits at the left between the lower pair, and a silver footswitch is at the bottom. Two quarter-inch jack nuts and a smaller barrel jack show along the top edge.

CMOS fuzz with rhythmic oscillation · CD4049 · One of a kind

Moria

Fuzz Available · 1 of 1

A CMOS fuzz that does not behave itself. The board is PCB Guitar Mania's Dwarf Destroyer, after Dwarfcraft's Great Destroyer: a CD4049 logic chip pushed into fuzz instead of logic, with a starve control that browns the chip out until it sputters and starts oscillating on its own. Drive, Starve, Tone and Vol, and very little of it is subtle.

  • TypeFuzz with rhythmic oscillation (CMOS)
  • ControlsDrive, Starve, Tone, Vol
  • CircuitPCB Guitar Mania Dwarf Destroyer, a CD4049UBE
  • Enclosure125B
  • Weight~8 oz
  • Power9V DC, center-negative
  • BuiltSeptember 2026
  • StatusAvailable - one of a kind
$120 free shipping Buy with Card Email to Buy

What it does

A CD4049UBE is a CMOS hex inverter, which is a logic chip. It is not meant to be an amplifier at all. Bias one into the part of its range where it is neither on nor off and it will amplify, badly and squarely, and that hard square clipping is where this kind of fuzz comes from. It sounds nothing like a transistor fuzz because it is not one.

The Starve knob is the reason to want this pedal. It chokes the voltage going into the chip, and a CMOS chip that is not getting enough supply does not fade out politely. It starts dropping out, sputtering, and breaking into rhythmic oscillation that rides along on top of whatever you are playing. Far enough down and the pedal is more or less playing itself. If you want to try that trick on something else, the same idea is on this site as a free layout, the Power Starve.

Fourteen components, which is the part I like. Almost nothing in the box and it still makes that much noise.

125B, black, with the name on it in blue marker. One of a kind.

Demo

Demo video coming soon.

Controls

Drive
How hard the chip gets pushed. There is a great deal of it and the top of the range is not a polite place.
Starve
Chokes the supply going into the chip. This is the one to reach for: wound down, the fuzz stops being a fuzz and starts stuttering and oscillating by itself.
Tone
Takes the top off, or does not.
Vol
Output level, last in the chain. There is plenty on tap.

Circuit: PCB Guitar Mania Dwarf Destroyer, after Dwarfcraft's Great Destroyer. Built, painted, and finished by Onion Madder as an original one-off - not affiliated with, endorsed by, or a clone of any commercial brand.