Tripple Fuzz

[Schappy]

Can anyone direct me to a schematic and/or layout for Tim E's Tripple Fuzz?

[earthtonesaudio]

http://www.jiggawoo.eclipse.co.uk/guitarhq/Circuitsnippets/tripple.gif

This was the first result in a google image search of "tripple fuzz"

[Schappy]

Is that Tim Escobedos circuit.

I dont see his name mentioned there.

[Cardboard Tube Samurai]

WHo cares!? I'm going to breadboard that little mo-fo ASAP!

[Schappy]

It is in fact Time E's design.

A sound sample can be found here.

http://www.jiggawoo.eclipse.co.uk/guitarhq/Circuitsnippets/snippets.html

[John Lyons]

How about something like.
"Gee, thanks Alex!"

[Schappy]

Yes, Alex, much appreciated.

[Schappy]

I just breadboarded the circuit and am finding it unusable.

As I turn the gain knob it goes from nothing to splatty very quickly.

I substituted a 5089 Q1. Im gonna try a new gain pot as well.

[John Lyons]

The sound sample is accurate.
If you like the sound of that then
you'll like the circuit.
Something is wrong with your gain pot.
The sweet overdrive up to distortion is
from zero to 12:00, past that it gets wild and then
splatty (which sounds great to me).

John

[Brymus]

Yeah using the 5089 could contribute too,its gain is IIRC 300-900
and the MPSA18 IIRC is 100-500 (same as 5088)

[Schappy]

I will try a new gain pot.

I will have to order some transistors.

[Schappy]

I found some 5088's and it made it a little better.
I only get a usable sound with the gain knob turned all the way up.

New gain pot next.

Forget to ask

Log or Linear for the gain?

[Schappy]

Okay new gain pot but same thing.

I basically get nothing until about noon on the pot.


Collector voltage goes from about 4.5-6.3V.

Other than trying a MPSA18 Im stumped.

[DougH]

John is right. Up to noon on the gain, it has a nice overdrive. Above that, it gradually gets more splatty. I built one a long time ago and it's a cool little fuzz.

There are numerous threads about this fuzz on this forum . If you're having problems, there's a lot of info on this here if you search. Also, check the "what to do if it doesn't work" sticky for troubleshooting procedures. The schematic Alex posted is Tim's original schematic. Be wary of other people's layout "interpretations".

[John Lyons]

Use a linear pot (assuming you used a log) and you'll get
what you want, a better gain range. By the way, the gain pot
will "scratch" as it's changing the bias of the transistor and
has no (can't) cap to block DC.

[keto]

I built this yesterday and love it.  As I had read, nice soft clipping fuzz/OD at the low to mid of the gain range, getting wilder brighter and much more harmonics as the gain goes up from there.  Probably unusable for most applications at max, but fun to play with.

I had built a Zvex Machine clone last week, which is supposedly 2 triplers (? correct semantics?) in one circuit...and really disliked it.  But I can definitely see where the magic is, 1 alone is really outstanding.

It was the first thing I've built directly from schematic and not from a layout, though I have modified existing layouts extensively.  A bit of a milestone, even if I did just follow the schematic pretty faithfully.  Someone with more experience could undoubtedly shrink it down a bit by relocating some things.


***MISTAKE ON DRAWING right hand leg of C2 goes to middle leg of Q3 ONLY and left leg of R5 NOT the bottom leg of Q3  Also, R6 is 10K

Further to the discussion above, the C10K seems perfect for the gain pot.

Variances from the schematic:
-470K instead of 500K @ R5, just because I was too lazy to stack a couple resistors
-Q2 is 2N3906 on the schematic, and Q3 is 2N3904.
-1M pulldown resistor added.
-D1 & D2 were not specified on the schematic, beyond "silicon diodes".



The 'wide wire' at the input of the circuit is heatshrink around a couple of ferrite beads.  I can't say I've done any scientific testing, but they do seem to help with RF.

[DougH]

Nice work! Congrats on interpreting the schematic. 

With the gain at 75% I was able cop early grand funk messenger fuzz tones- for what that's worth.