Building a fuzz with tone...questions

[msurdin]

Hi,

I want to build a fuzz for a project I am working on. It would be going into a multi effect enclosure so It would need to be powered by a power supply. I know a lot of fuzzes don't react well to power supplies or things before them. I am going to have a comp and buffer before it.
Also I would want to have a tone on it.

My project is for a David Gilmour Pete Cornish board. I love that sound of the Cornish P-1/ P-2 that he uses. I'm not sure if it is a silicone or germanium fuzz.

Thanks for you help!

Matt

[enigmur]

Um, you didnt really ask a question at all What are you trying to find out?

[msurdin]

I am trying to find out how to build a fuzz that would sound good after some effects and with a power supply

[Mark Hammer]

1) They ALL will, and under the "right" conditions, NONE of them will.  Achieving any sort of distortion is always a matter of having the signal level reach some critical threshold where clipping starts to occur.  Anything that detracts from the signal level, or prevents it from going high enough to clip will result in less distortion.  So, in theory you can stick a fuzz at any point in the signal chain and as long as you can assure the signal level is high enough, it *will* distort and even distort heavily.  I certainly can't vouch for the tonal quality or nosie level, but it will distort.
   Sometimes it will distort intermittently.  For instance, you could take the fuzziest nastiest thing on earth and if you stick it after a phaser or univibe the fuzz will come and go.  Why?  Becausethose effects work by introducing notches or dips in the certain frequencies, and the dips move around.  If the dip just happens to be situated near or at the note you are playing at the moment, the resulting output signal will be a bit lower and drive the fuzz less, resulting in less audible distortion.
   Just for the record, some artists' "signature sound" IS a UNivibe followed by a distortion, simply because the wavering distortion level creates a special kind of shimmer.  Think Hendrix and Robin Trower.

2) A power supply does not require any particular sort of fuzz.  Not unless you are aiming for something that gets "dying battery" sounds and you want to be able to do that while using a power supply.

[MikeH]

I think the power supply issues you've heard of might be due to the fact that many fuzzes use PNP transistors, and therefore the circuit often has to be "positive ground".  So you couldn't have a positive ground circuit in the same box as a negative ground and run them off of the same power supply, because they're opposite in polarity.  As long as the fuzz design you're using isn't positive ground, you shouldn't have any power supply issues. 

Not unless you are aiming for something that gets "dying battery" sounds and you want to be able to do that while using a power supply.

For that "dying battery" simulation sound check out the article at http://beavisaudio.com/

[finkfloyd]

Pete cornish's P1 is a 4 stage fuzzbox, like a big muff, infact it IS a BMP of sorts, with a few tweaks, and with a input buffer with rf rejection, which my guess is he uses a opamp buffer for this purpose.

Id love to rip/degoop one of them apart to dispell the myth...

[Processaurus]

For a ready made design, the lovely great cheddar at Geofex has opamp buffers on the input and output, good for playing well with other pedals, plus it uses common Si transistors and is negative ground too.