Fuzz Face Germanium

[Ell]

I'm gonna be finishing this pedal in a few days (as soon as my 3pdt supply arrives). It's positive ground. Will this mess up my other pedals? How on earth do I wire the LED?

[petemoore]

  LED is pretty easy, pick a current limiting resistor for it [4k7 is safe to start] for brightness and current draw, put that on the 'line' side [see a flat reflection in the skirt of the 'glass, viewed from the side]. Now hook it up to the battery, reverse poles until it lights, remember which pole the resistor/LED lead went to when it lit.
  That's the LED lighting circuit, battery R and LED.
  The 3PDT will have a 'column' left over after true bypass wiring, pick the two lugs that connect when the effect side lugs connect to the switch poles, and becomes open when the switch is set to bypass, now you have a switched LED.
  I don't know which FF you are building, or how far along you are, Pos Gnd. can't share with negative ground power supply, a direct short will result.

[R.G.]

It would be Really Smart to do a small perfboard build of an LT1054 charge pump converter to make the -9V the pedals wants out of +9V into the pedal. That will let your new fuzz face share the same power supply as your other pedals simply and easily. This only takes the chip and four capacitors to do.

[mr.adambeck]

RG-
That sounds interesting, I've never heard of that before.  I'm also building a AC128 Fuzz Face soon -- Do you have any links that a noob could look at to better understand how to do this?  I did a search and everything I found as a bit over my head.

Thanks

[Ell]

It would be Really Smart to do a small perfboard build of an LT1054 charge pump converter to make the -9V the pedals wants out of +9V into the pedal. That will let your new fuzz face share the same power supply as your other pedals simply and easily. This only takes the chip and four capacitors to do.

That would be awesome. I'll be looking into doing this.


I've temporarily finished the pedal with just a DPDT switch, till my 3PDT's arrive. It sounds alright on it's own, but a lot of my higher notes are too quiet to make any noise through the pedal. So, I put a Stratoblaster infront of the pedal and now it screams, sustains nicely and gives the kinda sound I was hoping for. It's pretty cool. I made a Silicon Fuzz Face as well which is pretty much the same, except I didn't do additional switches on the Silicon, and it's obviously got Silicon transistors. I prefer the Germanium one at the moment, so I guess I'll keep that one for my permanent rig, but the Silicon is awesome for getting a Master Of Reality kinda sound.

[ralley]

...Do you have any links that a noob could look at to better understand how to do this?  I did a search and everything I found as a bit over my head.

I have a vero layout for a MAX1044 converter I use to run my Ge Fuzz Face.  It works well, I will upload if I can recover my PC which crashed last night.

Rob.

[Ell]

...Do you have any links that a noob could look at to better understand how to do this?  I did a search and everything I found as a bit over my head.

I have a vero layout for a MAX1044 converter I use to run my Ge Fuzz Face.  It works well, I will upload if I can recover my PC which crashed last night.

Rob.

If you can recover it I'd be very grateful to see that as well.

[davent]

The geofex page. http://www.geofex.com/circuits/+9_to_-9.htm

dave

[ralley]

Right, hard drive recovery under way (phew).  Here is the promised vero layout for a simple +/-9V power supply using a MAX1044 chip.  Simply power your Fuzz Face or other positive ground effects from the 0V and -9V lines and you will be good to go.



(-Ve side of the 10uF caps is the shaded segment on the diagram, remember the 3 cuts under the IC).

Rob.

[Soeren_DK]

Right, hard drive recovery under way (phew).  Here is the promised vero layout for a simple +/-9V power supply using a MAX1044 chip.  Simply power your Fuzz Face or other positive ground effects from the 0V and -9V lines and you will be good to go.



(-Ve side of the 10uF caps is the shaded segment on the diagram, remember the 3 cuts under the IC).

Rob.

Can you power it from a DC powersupply instead of a battery?

Cheers
Soren

[edvard]

Hey, that Max1044 circuit looks very cool, but I gotta ask...

For as long as I've been aware of the Fuzz Face circuit, I've built the PNP versions with the negative side powering the board as well as hooked to the ground at the jacks, so circuit ground is just the + end of the battery.

I've never had any problems, but I sure would appreciate it if someone would enlighten me as to why this might be a bad idea.

[frank_p]

It would be Really Smart to do a small perfboard build of an LT1054 charge pump converter to make the -9V the pedals wants out of +9V into the pedal. That will let your new fuzz face share the same power supply as your other pedals simply and easily. This only takes the chip and four capacitors to do.

The Mouser catalog specifies V_out(min) at 15V and V_out(max) at -5V.   

Can it really deliver -9V at the output pin ?

Same thing at Digikey:
5.2V max  (?)

I think I am missing something...

The datasheets are not as clear...
http://oh3tr.ele.tut.fi/~ftp/pa/cly10amp1/lt1054.pdf
http://pdf1.alldatasheet.com/datasheet-pdf/view/112442/TI/LT1054CP.html

[ralley]

Can you power it from a DC powersupply instead of a battery?

Yep powersupply is fine (that's how I use it).

rob.