My New Fuzz - the Starfuzz

[John Lyons]

Ha! That's why a put in the (entiometer) in there...silly me...pot jokes...

I think with the pot is was at a very small resistance that smoked it. A lot of current and a small resistance turned the pot trace into a very short lived light bulb filament.

I poked around with the Star circuit and got this clip with a 5K resistance to ground off the 2N3906's emitter and the 3904 straight to ground. Basically an octave bypass pot with a slight blend in the pots mid section.
This was with the "fuzz" low and on the neck PU. The 5K was set to octave first and then...er...non octave.

Here is a Clip with the Fuzz set high and switching between octave and octave off with the 5k pot. Obviously without the octave it gets fuller.
I also found that with the fuzz set higer it gets spatty and kind of overmodulated. At about 80K resistance to ground on the fuzz knob is good for the sounds I liked best.

I came across this Tremolo/ring mod type oscillation Clip with the fuzz set full. What are the chances this will remain with the circuit off the breadboard? There are some nice in between settings there...

Wacky wild stuff...

John

[mac]

Mac - that is really cool.  Has anybody breadboarded that to see how it sounds?

Arsenio Novo's config sounds very different. This is my post about it.
http://www.diystompboxes.com/smfforum/index.php?topic=53694.0

[tcobretti]

Those clips sound great.  That is a cool mod with the 5k resistor - great idea.  Did you try it on the 3904 also? 

I think some of that ring mod/modulation thing is a tiny bit of signal passing thru the gate.  Sounded cool though!

I am going to be really busy the next few days, but maybe next week I'll get back on the breadboard and try your 5k resistor out.  I also still want to try out a warp control.

[John Lyons]

I tried a trimmer on the 3904 as well but I don't recall what it did specifically. I think it did about the same thing...I'll have to check.
I think it's just throwing off the balance point of the octave. A matched pair of transistors my be the way to go... Haven't tried any other transistors to see how it carries across with other HFEs.

As far as a warp control lifting both transistors above ground...have to try that as well. I really have no idea what is actually going on here anyway!!

Mac
This thread is split in two now. I'll have to try this other configuration. Sounds like it's a nice sounding OD not a ripping fuzz beast like the Star.

John

[tcobretti]

With the warp control, I just meant a 20k-ish pot controlling the flow thru a diode pair at the end of the circuit, not unlike the Bosstone.  Have you seen Jack Orman's cool warp control 'Lab'?

http://www.muzique.com/lab/warp.htm

As I said in that other thread, I'm not a huge fan of diodes on the end of a fuzz, but on this circuit I think it might have an interesting effect.

Thanks again for playing with this and coming up with some cool ideas for me to try!

[John Lyons]

I don't think this will be a good canidate for clipping diodes athough it may add a little sustain.
Since the circuit is so squared up in the first place.. Like the bosstone the circuit is pretty fuzzy but this one is a lot more than the BT.

I'm well familiar with Jack's warp control. I was thinking that you meant to use the warp control to hold the Q2/3 stages above ground since they are acting as a clipper. A clean blend/bypass is better though...not what you mean I don't think...

It would be cool to get rid of all or some of the gating but I think it's intrinsic to the way this is working here.

Can anyone shed some light on what's going on here with the PNP/NPN pair . It's not push pull since the collectors are parallel. Kind of a piggyback with different type transistors.

John

[slacker]

Sounds great, I'll have to give it a try.

[culturejam]

I don't see an image of a layout in this thread anywhere. I really liked a few of the sound clips and would love to build this. Can somebody help a brother out?

Thanks

[tcobretti]

The schem disapeared from the first page, so here it is, and i'll throw together a vero layout for ya.

[tcobretti]

Here's vero