Intentionally gated fuzz

[Taylor]

I searched around quite a bit, but could only find people talking about non-functioning circuits being gated.

A friend wants me to build him a fuzz for bass that can do gated sounds, like the Chunk Systems Brown Dog. Any thoughts on how to do this? Is it a matter of taking a regular fuzz and misbiasing it?

[mnordbye]

Yeah, you can surely try to misbias a fuzz on your breadboard. I think it'll do the trick for you. Maybe try a fuzz face kind of circuit first?

[mac]

Increasing the FF input and pot caps, and raising the 33 to 100k or so may work.
Also, check joe davisson gated fuzz idea.

mac

[tcobretti]

Fuzzes are generally pretty simple.  The first transistor boosts or bufers the signal, and the following transistor stage or stages make it fuzzy.  Patiently tweaking the bias of the second/third stages may get you the sound you want.  Just put pots in place of the bias resistors and tweak away.

[kvb]

the Bazz Fuss circuit can be made to gate.
Look at the Bombilator schematic in my gallery (p 5 of gallery  then go to the last page of Boubombilzoo)

There are two gate modes. One with 470K to ground (soft gate) - the other with 1M to Vref. (hard gate)
this is super buzzy

I would experiment with Vref on the input of other fuzz circuits to see if this works

[Sir H C]

The second version (4 transistor) of the Maestro FZ-1B (not the A not the no letter) has a "squelch" in it that is gating.  Can not set the gating, but it does this.

[liquids]

I was on a kick trying to get something synthy, gated, and super cool for a while - when they work, it's a lot of fun!  That reminds me--I have to get back to those works in progress!...

Anyhow, I can't speak for how it would work (if modded) for bass since I tries mostly on guitar, but also the Tim E. / Circuit Snippets PWM and the 'Simple Square wave Shaper made Simpler...' are very gated and synthy tones with a few mod options that may work for you.

Also, there's an easy to build fuzz-face based schematic out there that uses low hFE silicon transistors, and a higher-than-usual resistance from the Q2 emitter to Q1 gate, for one, with a very 'pinched' gated sound your friend might like.

One thing is, these circuits don't all end up sounding the same.  Since we're not manipulating the gating digitally but more so accidentally by controling bias, etc, it can be frustrating if it's doing too much or too little gating--which may well depend heavily on the signal (pickups, preamp, buffers, dirt, even note choice) you are sending into it, not just the limitations of the circuit itself. 

So, try as many of these type of circuits as you can - most of them are pretty simple--they may all be similar, but wont end up the same.  From my experience, tweaking values of each only gets you so far away from the core tone, while a different design may do what your ears want in spades from the go...so experiment with a couple designs, and have fun!

[sevenisthenumber]

the Bazz Fuss circuit can be made to gate.
Look at the Bombilator schematic in my gallery (p 5 of gallery  then go to the last page of Boubombilzoo)

There are two gate modes. One with 470K to ground (soft gate) - the other with 1M to Vref. (hard gate)
this is super buzzy

I would experiment with Vref on the input of other fuzz circuits to see if this works

where is your gallery?

[fuzzo]

Why don't increase the 100K which links the base first transistor to the emetter of the second ? Zvex woolly mammoth use that trick (500K pot + 100K R).

[Strategy]

There's also the Great Cheddar (recent build for me) one of the switch settings on it gets it into gate fuzz territory and increasing the gain does some nice pulse width modulation sounding stuff...

- Strategy

[Taylor]

Yeah, this post was about 6 months ago. I ended up building a Brassmaster with a voltage starve knob and a pot controlling the bias of one of the transistors, forget which. It was a nice and versatile circuit.

[Strategy]

that sounds like an awesome project, nice one!
- Str@t3gy

[petemoore]

  Had few that could do that sort of by accident.
  Green Ringer, if the input noise gets low enough [which I could reliably make it do] made a nice noise-gate, with the FF on before it, careful string damping or dropping the guitar volume a little, silenced the circuits.
  I'm not sayin' I could build a GR and it'd do that for sure, but I built one and it did that.
  But the Tycho seemed to do this too, perhaps something about the transformer/diodes
  Basically any circuit can be made to gate, it's just whether the gating actually serves some purpose such as sounding nicely seared, nastily garbled, intermittently conductive, or noise-gate like.
  Drop the PS voltage, having high and low 'push' available with whatever is driving the gate helps allow more predictable opening and closing, or having it open and close every cycle even.

[Gus]

I make the 5K bias an external pot this circuit goes gated to compressed
http://www.diystompboxes.com/pedals/gusFuzzFace.gif

The simple opamp muff fuzz gates.

[sevenisthenumber]

I make the 5K bias an external pot this circuit goes gated to compressed
http://www.diystompboxes.com/pedals/gusFuzzFace.gif

The simple opamp muff fuzz gates.

thanks gus!

[funkycam]

build a simple comparator fuzz.
this anderton design is super gated & a very easy build.

http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v324/caseyseffectpage/Fuzz%20and%20Overdrives/?action=view&current=squarewavefuzz741.jpg
redrawn by the guy who owns the page
http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v324/caseyseffectpage/Fuzz%20and%20Overdrives/?action=view&current=squarewavefuzz.jpg