Is it just me....

[axg20202]

...or is the 3-knob tonebender not very good?  I built this ages ago (GGG layout), but I guess I only really noticed it's shortcomings when I was comparing it head-to-head with lots of other disto/fuzz boxes - I've been completely reorganising my pedal board and 'weeding' it out. My tonebender (using matched germ trannies from smallbear) is quite sputtery and the note decay is not very graceful at all. There's a hint of octave in the sound higher up the fretboard, which I like, but I find myself loving my germanium FF and not using this at all.....
Anyone care to comment? (other than to say "well, who gives a damn?!")

[petemoore]

  Nope, I think the box you have there has something to do with it !
  Doens't sound like much fun to play with.
  3 knob bender is lower gainey sound than the 2 knob bender, but 'sputtery' is common enough to either one if the sputtteriness hasn't been debugged or ironed out somehow.
  Yes, and you do.
  But maybe not enough to actually figure it out.

[John Lyons]

Yes, In other words, there is something not quite right with yours. Most likely the biasing resistor at the collector of Q2, usually around 10K, 8.2K etc.
It's softer sounding than the TonebenderMKII but it's a nice sounding circuit I think.

John

[axg20202]

  Yes, and you do.
  But maybe not enough to actually figure it out.

Not true at all - I wouldn't be asking if I didn't care enough to figure it out! It was a reasonable question. Not sure if you're joking here or trying to be smart. 

[axg20202]

Scratch that. It's been a long day.

[petemoore]

  Why am I so short ?
  Probably because I do almost the exact same thing sometimes...so it isn't 'just you'.
  And you know you'll figure it out too.
  look at the voltages...did you socket the transistors? are they GE's?

[DougH]

"Is it just me..."

Yeah, it's just you.

You shouldn't have that problem with normally functioning fuzz box unless it's an intentionally trashy/noisy design. As Pete mentioned, it's probably the bias that is off. Check your collector voltages and adjust resistors as necessary.