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fuzz effects

$300?!?!? Good god man! Start with a Big Muff of some sort. They are much cheaper than your budget, sound great, and are a very "standard" pedal to start out with.

Personally, I am a fan of the Black Russian version or the English Muff'n. I've got the English on my board right now, and I'm planning on building a BYOC or GGG clone soon.
 
There are many different kinds of fuzz pedals. You have your Muffy fuzz (big muff, anything with "russian" or "pickle" in the name), gated fuzz (oxide, wolly mammoth, brown dog to name a few), brassy fuzz (brassmaster, assmaster, oxide again), and many others. So, it really depends on the application. If you want synthy, go for gated. If you want rock/metal/doom go for the muff, etc...

My personal favorite is the Iron Ether Oxide, because it can do gated and brassy and it has a clean blend and an eq to preserve low end.
 
The Team Awesome! Fuzzmachine from Smallsound/Bigsound can get tones similar to the Pickle Pie B, and he can mod it with a gate circuit if you ask him to. They are about the same size once you take into account that the pickle pie has side jacks and the TAFM has top jacks. I've had both (and everything on the list above except the Oxide come to think of it...:hiding:) and they are both awesome.
 
the PPB has a surprising amount of tones for 3 knobs and a blend. metalNIGHTmetalNIGHT's correct, the TAFM can get close to some of the PPB's tones, but i think they excel at different things.

i love both, i don't think either are ever going to leave my board, but yeah..... it kinda breaks down to....

PPB - more articulate because of how the blend is integrated, does cutting, more high end buzzsaw tones really well

TAFM - blend is great, gate is AWESOME (only by request right now i think), does wall of face smashing great and oscillates a bit so has interesting movement with held notes

Oxide - Range Of Tones MASTAH. goes from gated to cutting to smooth to angry. great pedal.

i'm not a huge fan of straight ahead muffs (giggety), but those three cover all the tones i really enjoy out of fuzz on bass.

and the Depth Charge is a grindy, low BEAST. want one.

all IME, IMO all that. everybody that's chimed in so far REALLY knows their stuff.
 
Pickle Pie B Hella Bass Fuzz, Team Awesome Fuzz Machine, Grey 'Stache and/or B:Assmaster. All these great pedals show up in the classified ( at great prices) section, used and in great condition. All the pedals I mentioned are under $300... I haven't had enough money to start my fuzz adventure yet, but I know it's a long journey to find the fuzz you hear in your head...better start soon...