maestro fz-1 volume drop?

[Nalo1022]

I recently made the maestro fz-1 with the layout by dragonfly. I got the oem transistors from smallbear and finally got to toss them in today. I am able to get an ok fuzz from this unit but there is enormous drop in volume, at normal playing volume you can hear almost nothing once the effect is engaged. The only way to get some audible usable sound is with the amp cranked and boost before the fuzz. any recommendations would be great as I am builgin this for a friend and he is dying to get it. The transistors are socketred adn i tryed many combimnations and bias settings but alklas nothing that really  works well.  Even when I am cranking the amp and boosting the signal the fuzz is very gated and farty (more so then even the maestro should be.

[alderbody]

This is the sound of the FZ-1...  Mostly gated and farty...

Run a search in the archives because there are many things to find out about this pedal.

I had the same problems (maybe worse) with mine, but i tried an AC128 in Q3 and it got significantly better.
(Q1 and Q2 are the original spec trannies from SB)

btw, this pedal likes Humbuckers. With singles it's just weak gated and farty.

If you get it to work "acceptably" you'll discover that it's a very nice fuzz, but IMHO it's not for "every day"...

[smnm]

This is the sound of the FZ-1...  Mostly gated and farty...

Because this was the first commercially produced fuzz, it's not much like it's successors at all.
I've got an original but it sounded so "bad" when I got it I assumed there must have been somethingh wrong with it.
I checked it all out, swapped out the caps, checked all the voltages against the archived posts and they were spot on, that's really what it's meant to sound like.

Even on full volume & fuzz there's a loss in volume, maybe not as dramatic as you describe.
Once you get the right gtr and pickup with it it sounds pretty good, but you have to adjust your expectations.