there is an old joke i read in the liner notes of stark reality’s “now” record. i don’t have it in my hands, but the gist of the joke is this:

their guitarist had just bought a new fuzz pedal, and upon playing a few notes, the saxophonist looked at him and said “hey! I’M the sax player!”

he had bought a fuzz face, but i have a feeling the tone wicker big muff will set you in the right direction. if you are looking for more of a rhythm sound, the hog can get you something similar to a horn section (but it will require some careful tweaking and will not sound very horn-like unless the rest of the band is playing. the micro synth is also worth checking out).

EDIT: just feel like clarifying, the big muff gives you a rich, reedy tone that can sound like a horn if you phrase your lead lines properly. there is a queens of the stone age cover that uses an octave fuzz in lieu of the original’s saxophone, and it sounds pretty good. the big muff will be much smoother, and in my opinion, fairly convincing.

if you get the voices and the filter just right, the hog can sound similar to a big band horn section in a mix – but on its own, it really just sounds like a strange organ.

i just don’t want to make it sound like they are similar effects.

queens of the stone age
romeo void
(the part i speak of comes right after the singer says “never… say… NEVER”)

Well the most important things to the saxophone sound are:

Attack: attack is up to the player. Of course this is hard to emulate on guitar. On all the attack pedals you set the attack time, where really it needs to be variable. Probably the best thing is to do pinky or volume pedal swells. In a Television song they do this to great effect on the song Venus to get sort of a trumpet sound. David Gilmour was also pretty good at that. The other thing is that the tonality of the sax changes with the attack, something that an envelope pedal with a very quick response time could help with.

Waveshape: saxophones wave shapes are more square than guitars. Fuzz pedals help a lot there. In fact there are some recordings I’ve heard where I find it hard to tell the difference a sax and a guitar that’s simply been distorted.