Deluxe Bazz Fuss grounding issue

[dwrockdoctor]

Hi there guys,

I've been happily building fuzz and boost style pedals for the past few months, had some good sucesses and a few failures too. Sucessfully completed a zvex fuzz factory clone which is now on my main pedal board and a few successful bazz fusses and a SHO clone too.

I've next put my hand to a deluxe bazz fuss based off a vero layout by nocentelli with a switch incorporated to switch between different diodes. I wired everything up and boxed it but I have major grounding noise with effect engaged but I also major grounding noise in bypass as well, which makes me think the problem is off the circuit board. With effect engaged there is also a slightly off pitch upper octave effect to the fuzz tone... All controls work as they should.

Here is the layout with my bad photoshopped off board wiring drawn in:



I am still a newb at this and have quite a bit to learn but if anyone can see anything amiss that would be causing the problems that would be greatly appreciated. I have tried out a new switch to make sure it wasn't that and also went between having the ground wire from input sleeve go directly to output sleeve too but it didn't. I reflowed any ground wires coming off the board too. All I can think is that either the input or output jack has a dodgy sleeve tab?

[antonis]

Your wiring looks OK (to me..)

Try to move DC jack's GND from ring to sleeve (or short-circuit ring & sleeve with a cable) to have a "stiff" GND connection...
(actually to bypass guitar's jack need for grounding bridge...)

[dwrockdoctor]

Thanks for the response antonis!

I ended up replacing the output jack and it helped get rid of the ground noise in bypass. There was still some intermittent ground noise when fuzz was on and as I was using plastic jacks I decided to take a wire from the input jack sleeve ground and attach where one of the pots screwed in so it had a more solid ground to the enclosure and now all is sweet and working as it should  

Because I used a socketed KSP13 darlington transistor and it has a damn high hFe in combination with the 10K resistor, this iteration of the bazz fuss is rather smooth and has no gated fuzz effect and responds dynamically (ie; cleans up) to guitar volume pot changes rather nicely. Putting in a 2N3904, it instantly went gated but too much because of the 10k resistor. I think I'll make another one these in future with a pot in replacement of the 10k collector resistor so I can dial in some gated response if need be and try out a variety of different gained transistors for a variety of fuzz tones from smooth to spluttery and gated.

[antonis]

A 2N5088 or a MPSA13 should work fine (as long as your Gain pot is 1k)...

(but of course, all the fun is on trying replacements..)