Colorsound One Knob Fuzz emitter resistor question

[glops]

I think this my first posted technical question here...

I have this fuzz on my breadboard and I'm going to commit it to perf tonight.  While experimenting with different components on the breadboard
I took out the 1K on Q2's emitter and put the emitter of Q2 directly to ground.  I noticed a nice boost in gain in doing this.  

My question is, is the 1K there to tame the gain a bit since this circuit has a lot of gain?  I currently have a 3904 at Q1 and some random
Mitsubishi metal can that I picked up at the surplus store in Q2.  Maybe that has something to do with it.  The rest of the circuit is built via the
Fuzz Central schematic.

This is such a great easy circuit.  Gonna socket the in and out caps and the transistors.  MPSA18 sounds pretty sick when used in Q1, maybe too much though...

[PRR]

There's many different reasons to use an emitter resistor.

> is the 1K there to tame the gain

That's a very common reason. A naked transistor, well-used, has too darn much gain for anything (except a fuzzbox).

But there's other reasons. You have to set transistor current somehow. One way is to hold the Base at some sorta-known voltage, and pick an emitter resistor to flow the desired current. Say you bias a silicon transistor with 1.6V at the Base. There's 0.6V drop base-emitter, leaving 1V emitter to ground. If you put in a 1K resistor, 1V/1K is 1mA, a nice value for many small stages. If you then change to a zero ohm resistor, on the face of it you have 1V/0= infinite current.

> Colorsound One Knob Fuzz

Ah.... if you mean the one linked from the top of this thread, as I read it, it just "won't work". With Q2's Re set to zero, Q1 has no bias, acts dead until a fairly large signal is applied.

If you like the sound, and nothing is smoking, just do it.

[glops]

Thanks, Paul.

That little bit of information helps me a lot as far as learning.  With the way things are setup now on the breadboard, it sounds great.  I think I'll put a socket in place of the 1K on perf in case I want swap out Q2 with other transistor as a safety.

Thanks for your reply!