Fuzz face sound/voltage help

[Electric Warrior]

now powered by a very lively 9.6v ish battery
Q1
C = -0,46
B = -0.09
E = 0

Q2
C = -5.73 (with the bias pot turned all the way down(up? i don't know))
B = -0.46
E = -0.35

does that seem reasonable? what are the standard voltages for a ge fuzz face? i've found a lot of different answers in my googling of this

Perfect. You're still well within vintage Fuzz Face territory with your voltages. And more importantly: it sounds good! Congratulations!

[Electric Warrior]

I completely forgot about the problems you still have with the circuit:
I guess your amp may be a little too clean with the volume low. The clean sounds a Fuzz Face works well with are rather warm.
As your pedal is still too bright for your setup, try using a 500k volume pot. That should give it a bigger bottom end.

[artr]

thanks a lot for the compliments and input guys!!! well, i guess i'm going to put it into a box now, looking forward to that

Hey, nice playing! I think it sounds about as good as a Ge FF sounds but maybe I'm not to picky. haha. A TB MKII will go more, I think that's the next circuit for you to tackle!

Here's the link to Joe Davisson's "Electronic Math Helper"
http://www.diystompboxes.com/analogalchemy/emh/emh.html
It's not foolproof, but then nothing is when dealing with Germanium.

I think it's still a good idea to use the trimmer, and even mount it on your pedal top for Ge pedals because you will appreciate how quickly you can adjust it when the weather changes

checked out the MKII, that's gonna be my next project, especially after i found a clip of jimmy page playing it...
the calculator told me almost exactly the resistor values i have in now, 32.something in the "33k", so that's close enough i guess. and i'm definitely going to have the voltage trimmer in, also for the variation in tone.. i have this huge aluminum knob for it haha
thanks man!

Wow, nice playing!  Way better than me (I'm terrible at slide).

I think your FF sounds great.  Does it sound like a real one?  Well, they were all different, right?  I'm sure yours sounds like some of the vintage originals.  The one I built is really gainy, and doesn't clean up well.  It's just the nature of the transistor pair I used.  I had to voice it differently with a (much) smaller input cap to make it a usable sound.  Now it's kind of it's own thing, and that's okay I guess.  I would like to build another with lower gain that sounds like yours.  I'm bookmarking this thread so I can call up the specs you used.

that's really nice to hear!! i've thought about an input trimmer too, because it seems like all of the fuzz is at the last of the volume knob of the guitar.. so, it could be nice to be able to preset it at a tiny hair lower gain at the input, so I can use it as almost an overdrive without it going to fuuzz

I completely forgot about the problems you still have with the circuit:
I guess your amp may be a little too clean with the volume low. The clean sounds a Fuzz Face works well with are rather warm.
As your pedal is still too bright for your setup, try using a 500k volume pot. That should give it a bigger bottom end.

yeah, the super reverb i have is soo clean and bright at low volumes, so that's probably why.. i have a 500k actually, i'll give that a try! but it seems like a balance, because right now, it has a beautiful top end when i turn the volume down on the guitar, and i would like to keep that.. thanks man!

i'm going to try it with a strat when i can, all the fuzz sounds i know are strats, i don't have any idea how it should sound with a les paul, which i'm playing now

[artr]

i just remembered one little thing - the potentiometer that i have instead of "8k2", do i ground the third lug? it makes a pretty big difference in volume when i do

[Ben Lyman]

i just remembered one little thing - the potentiometer that i have instead of "8k2", do i ground the third lug? it makes a pretty big difference in volume when i do

no, just connect it in series with one outside lug and the wiper, then connect the unused lug to the wiper as well

[disorder]

> Q1 base voltage is off, it should be similar to Q2 ~ -0.6V.

These are Germanium parts. Vbe is likely to be ~0.1V, not the ~0.6V of Silicon.

Ah ha, totally slipped my mind. This reference schematic with dc values threw me off as well, however.

http://www.electrosmash.com/images/tech/fuzz-face/fuzz-face-bias-small.jpg

[PRR]

> This reference schematic

That looks wrong for AC128.

I suspect it is a Silicon plan with "AC128" paste-up.

However 1V at Collector is very odd, Ge or Si.

[Electric Warrior]

Maybe silicon with extremely low hfes.

[thermionix]

Well, geez, inspired by this thread (and maybe a little boredom) I decided to gut my high-gain FF and rebuild it into a more normal-gain one.

I robbed the lower gain (Hfe ~75) PNP from my Rangemaster build, which I wasn't using much anyway.  I moved my existing Q1 (Hfe ~110) into the Q2 spot, and put the rangemaster transistor in as Q1.

All other values I put to stock specs, except the 8.2K is replaced with a 2.7K in series with a 10K trimmer, I kept the 100KL input pot (variable resistor), and I have a 3-way rotary switch that selects different input caps.  I used a 2.2uF, .047uF, and .022uF and I'm pretty happy with these values for now.

Going straight in, I prefer the smaller input caps, but with a Tube Screamer in front, I like the 2.2uF.  I can really dial in some good tones with that setup.  My voltages are very close to the last set artr posted.  The pedal cleans up quite nicely now with the guitar volume, where it didn't before.  Pretty cool.