Zep fuzz

[Moonface]

What kind of tonebender Page used on the two first albums, markII or mkIII???
Some sites claim that he has used mkIII and the most say it was mkII??

Thanks
Moonface aka Matlock

[Quackzed]

i've always heard it was a mkii but i also read some articles with jimmy page that mentioned how Roger mayer (before he began working with hendrix) would tweak page's and jeff becks pedals and they'd report back and tell him what was good bad about the tone, so i think the fact that they had mayer around to tweak their pedals may make it hard to "duplicate" their tone... most agree that the mkii with germanium 0c71/81? transistors is the best sounding if you can get germanium t's at the right gains and you bias them with a multimiter...etc...plus experimenting with input caps and to some extent output caps can really give you a broad pallete to find your idea of that tone...
so much of it is in their fingers tho... its not your voice but the things that you say...

[Quackzed]

oh yeah.... i really like the silicon tonbender mk ii personally... could try it out while your waiting for your germanium t's to arrive...

[Moonface]

I don't have to wait, cause I have a pile of Telefunken AC122... 

[tcobretti]

I built a SI TBII and it's one of my favorite fuzzes, and I bet a GE TBII would be very nice.  About the Roger Mayer thing, I am fairly certain that Jimmy Page lies a lot in interviews, so I would take everything he says with a grain of salt.  He and Billy Gibbons are pretty shifty characters.

[mac]

About the SI MKII, how did you bias the first transistors? I just added a 1M resistor and a 500k pot from collector to base to get abut 8.7V at the collector. The schematic at GGG uses different bias.

mac

[MartyMart]

I built a SI TBII and it's one of my favorite fuzzes, and I bet a GE TBII would be very nice.  About the Roger Mayer thing, I am fairly certain that Jimmy Page lies a lot in interviews, so I would take everything he says with a grain of salt.  He and Billy Gibbons are pretty shifty characters.

Some great players that I know, generally fall into two camps:

1) They will either happily tell you straight, all about there gear/tone
or ...
2) They will just spin a load of hogwash and tell you almost nothing !!   

MM

BTW TB MKII is a real cracker when biased up well with some nice Ge's

[WGTP]

Don't attibute to malice that which may be explained by ignorance.   

[tcobretti]

It's been a little over a year since I built my TB, but I'm pretty sure I used the spec off of GGG.  I think I used 2n3904s, and it still has tons of gain.  I tend to use it with the gain all the way down into my slightly dirty amp, and it works pretty well.  Lately I've been putting my Scrambler ahead of it and am getting some crazy results.

And MartyMart, I agree.  Some guys see their tone as some kind of secret weapon that discriminates them from everyone else.  Although, in this day and age of signature effects/guitars/amps, people tend to be more forthcoming with what gear they use.

[MartyMart]

Don't attibute to malice that which may be explained by ignorance.   

I LIKE that .... offer them some "sheet music"   I guarantee that they will
turn down or shut up totally !!

MM