I can get no satisfaction (from my Fuzz-Tone Clone)

[alderbody]

Great tips guys!

I'll try them all as soon as i can and i'll report my findings.


thanks!

[gez]

If your transistors are socketed, try swapping them around to see if they'll bias up where you want them.

[gez]

It does make me wonder how variable the sound must have been when these were originally made.  Perhaps they had a transistor selection process in the factory or, then again, maybe they just didn't bother.  Who knows.

I've never had the money to collect these things, and they tend to be a bit thin on the ground over here, but I remember reading an interview with Billy Gibbons once and he talked about the variance of Fuzztones from unit to unit. 

From my own humble experiments, there's a huge range of tones to be had (most bad) from sticking trannies in without any thought whatsover...far worse than a FF I should imagine (still never built one  ).

I doubt very much that any testing was done at the factory though, would have made more sense to just design a better circuit - which they did in the end (in terms of design, not necessarily sound).

[smnm]

Hi again - so, I know this wasn't my thread anyway, but I checked the emitter and collector voltages for Q1 and Q2 on my rusty old FZ-1A (no 7014) and am pleased report that approx 40 yrs after leaving Kalamazoo, the voltages are right in Gez's 'sweet spot' range - 0.41 and 0.78, and with a Burns from 1960 it sounds pretty good to me, harsh and gritty with very little bottom end - just like on the Swamp Rats' version of the Sonics' tune Psycho. Not everyone's taste though.

If this sounds like self-satisfied gloating, I mention it only because when I got it I was convinced it wasn't right, I thought it sounded really crap, and it did with most of my guitars, heavily gated and lifeless, with zero sustain, until I picked the right pickups to match it. That's what a Fuzztone needs, IMO.

[alderbody]

I tried everything mentioned before in this thread and here are my findings:

Altering the values of the biasing resistors did not help. In fact it made the super-gating effect even worse!
I also tried many different batteries with slightest, almost insinificant variations in tone.
The 3V supply voltage made the pedal a lot more harsher and ugly sounding,
but after returning to 1.5V it sounded significantly better for some minutes!...
I actually measured the voltages at that time and they were identical to the ones when the gating was dominant. 
For a moment i tried a heavily used 9V battery (approx. 7.7V) and i got a spacy-motorboating sound.
(almost as if i plugged in a Roland TB-303!)
Then i started swapping transistors around the 3 positions to see if i would get a better sound.
I guess this brought a slight improvement, but nothing really special.

What finally made me smile was a AC128!.... I tried one in Q3 and suddenly the thing started working!!!
No gating at all...
I tried some more combinations with the AC128 and with two 128's and one 2614 but the best i got is with the AC128 for Q3.

I believe i accidentally fell into the correct leakage "ballpark" and the pedal sounds great!

Of course i have to 100% agree with smnm about the pedal liking strong output pickups.
Even when super-gated, it had a night and day difference when played with a humbucker loaded guitar!

The funny thing is that with the AC128 it sounds great even with the Strat!!!!   

Maybe this way its tone might not be 100% Maestro FZ-1A, but i think it is 99.99% which is quite satisfactory.

So after all, i got my satisfaction!!!!      

Thanks for all the help guys!

[gez]

Glad to hear you've got it up and running to your satisfaction!

It's easy to get gating with this circuit, but the good ones don't.  The notes I posted should help anyone get the most from this circuit (they've been verified by others).

[alderbody]

Glad to hear you've got it up and running to your satisfaction!

It's easy to get gating with this circuit, but the good ones don't.  The notes I posted should help anyone get the most from this circuit (they've been verified by others).

If i had the testing equipment and a lot of transistors to try, i would surely use your notes as a gospel!
In my case, i guess i was just very lucky to get it right with a random selection.

thanks again

[Ivana]

IMHO GREAT CIRCUIT. Difficult to tune it right. But it sounds GREAT. I experimented with different supply voltages (1.5-9v), different input BUFFERS (E-followers) - even classic designe fnd even without them. Thancs to Aron and Ges for articles abd opinions! Take a look to Olson New Sound - it very close to subj!

[Steben]

 Oh,yAaaaaah .........AC128's... Vastly underrated by some...