help building first pedal please!

[RedheadFever]

I'm new to this forum (and DIY boxes in general), and i started with a simple schematic, a fuzz face, here: http://www.montagar.com/~patj/fuzzface.gif
We just put the components in a breadboard to test it out before we perfboarded it. We subbed the 470* resistor with a 330, and for the 20uf cap, we used two 10's in parallel. we haven't added a switch or bypass yet, or even any jacks for the input. we are using the negative ground.

We got plenty of clear guitar sound through, that wasn't a problem. There was no fuzz sound, if any, that we could here. It sounded as if it was straight from the guitar to the amp.

We took the pots out and tested them, they're both solid as far as we can tell (though we didn't ground them in test, just in/out, with the third going to nothing).

I apologize in advance if this is too vague or extremely common, we're very new!

[LucifersTrip]

Welcome...the 1st thing everyone will point you towards is the debug link which you'll find at the top of the forum threads:


You got one important thing right...posting the schematic.

The next thing to do would be to take voltage readings at the transistor legs and post the results. A DMM is necessary for most troubleshooting.

Also helpful would be the the exact transistors you used and a clear closeup picture of your circuit.

Just curious, if you have no jacks, what did you use to hook it up?

good luck

[RedheadFever]

thanks for the reply

we pretty much just wrapped scrap wire around the output, and for the input we just stuck it on the battery. Yeah, its pretty ghetto.

We dont have a voltage meter laying around, but we're working on it (as well as the jacks). i think i will leave this for now and come back when we are more equipped. I was hoping it was a common enough problem to be a quick easy fix, but that is rarely true with these things!

I can pretty quickly post what transistors we're using if you want, i just don't have them in front of me.