My Buzzaround became a tremolo, why??

[dennism]

I built a Buzzaround on vero from the old Torchy layout.   It didn't work initially.   I did my usual first debugging step of applying elbow grease to the trace cuts and running a hot soldering iron between the strips to break solder whiskers and then it worked fine.

Here's my question.    Before I got it working right, it was basically a tremolo.   Mind you, it wasn't a good tremolo, but at certain knob settings, there was a very clear slow tremolo effect (but no fuzz).   Can anyone help me understand why?   Is the line between fuzz and tremolo that thin?

[kingswayguitar]

too bad you didn't grab a sound clip. good to hear it worked out though.

[duck_arse]

was it tremoloing your input signal, or just motorboating?

[dennism]

No, definitely didn't sound like motorboating.   It was a very slow smooth tremolo sound, that seemed to be turned on and off by the balance knob and seemed to be about unity as far as volume compared to bypassed signal.

It's probably just a complete fluke and I'd probably have a better chance at being struck by lightning than of reproducing it, but it made me curious how it could have happened.  I've built a few tremolos and I don't really understand how they work, but they have a much higher parts count then the Buzzaround particularly when it comes to electrolytic caps.

[mistahead]

Are there JFETs and an LFO in the Buzzaround?

[dennism]

No  JFETs or LFOs;  the Buzzaround is an ancient germanium fuzz, a variant of the Tone Bender basically.

[mistahead]

Ooooooh.... then I got nothing on this one sorry...

I will make something up though - that makes me feel better hahah ummmm.... oooh - the waveform of the signal was acting almost like an lfo and driving the first Q open and closed by having a cancelling effect across the balance knob.

[PRR]

> break solder whiskers and then it worked fine.

If you randomly MIS-connect parts of an amplifier, you might end up with ANYthing. Usually a dead lump, sometimes a squealer. Output getting into input with more than two large caps around can be a low-audio oscillator. Oscillators always sing as hard as they can, until they get crunched by some limit (often the supply voltage; maybe fuzz-diodes). While bouncing up and down, they do more-or-less audio amplification. Hence a poor tremolo.

[duck_arse]

^ prr, you sure have a way with words. away. something. they are always odd pictures you paint, and often involve automobiles in some form.

fascinating.