Robbed my junk bin and ended up with an excellent Si/Ge Fuzz Face!

[Burstbucker]

I've got today off and it's storming outside, so not much to do.

Bored, I went looking through some leftover transistors in my parts bin and found a couple of old Germanium transistors, a Hitachi 2SB77 and a Mullard OC44, so I went and breadboarded myself a fuzz face.  The gain of the OC44 is 100hfe and the 2SB77 might be a bit less than that.  I put the 2SB77 in Q1 and the OC44 in Q2.  Then I tried swapping them back and forth and found that the pedal sounded best with the OC44 in Q2.

While it sounded ok, it was too soft and muffled compared to my other Germanium Fuzz Faces.  So I decided to try replacing the 2SB77 with a 2N3906 silicon transistor in Q1 and it sounds surprisingly great!  I tried it next to my Analog Man Sun Face with Germanium Ti/UK transistors from the late 60's and it holds its own pretty good. Yeehaw! 

Now I'm going to strip out the guts of a previous build and repaint the box, maybe even try that swirl-paint treatment.

DIY effects building sure is such a fun and rewarding hobby!

[gbkd80]

That's awesome - and goes to show it's not always the mojo of the parts themselves... I just built a Tone Bender MKII Professional with junk drawer Ge trannies and I think it sounds fabulous.  Tried the pedal with gain-matched OC75s also and while it also sounded good, it wasn't blow-me-away good compared to the stuff I ended up using. 

[Gus]

have you searched for the "easy face"

[Burstbucker]

Yes, junk bin parts can add up to a great sounding Fuzz Face.  This thing even cleans up as good as my Analog Man Fuzz and another fuzz face that I built years ago with real NOS NKT275 white dot transistors.  Very touch and volume pot sensitive, just like a good FF should be.

Now I just have to box this thing up!

[Burstbucker]

I had seen the Easy Face many years ago and even made some photocopies that I still have on hand.

That's a great idea since I don't have a 1K pot for the Fuzz control right now, I could just wire it up like the easy face and go with that instead.