Diaz fuzz questions

[rangermaster]

Hi there.

Anyone familiar with the specs of a Cesar Diaz Square Fuzz ?

I know it uses NPN NTE103 trannies but what about the Hfe values and the bias settings ?

Thanks

[nocentelli]

"Just had one of these in for repair. Broken switch and cables. The fuzz pot was a 1k linear and NOT 2k in this unit. Everything looks original. The volume was 500k linear, 33uf and 2.2uf caps. The NTE103 transistors measured 250-300 hfe with geofex method. Leakage around 500ua. This means the collector voltage on q1 is low and high on q2 (7-8V).

So only difference from a fuzz face was the 33uf, 1.2k resistor and high gain transistors."

https://tinyurl.com/5uehkc6s

[mozz]

Back many moons ago, they used to sell ECG and SK replacement transistors before NTE was around. I was taught that these were really bottom of the barrel transistors and being just audio or just RF, most anything they sold would work in most any circuit. I can bet the gain tolerances and leakages were terrible. I've got a few RCA SK3003, 3004 trannys here and the leakage is bad but i can bet they work great in a FZ-1/FZ-1A maestro fuzz and some tonebenders. I'm guessing Cesar just used NTE and the 158's at the time because they were available.