the "russiagate" fuzz... ge npn gated russian 404 fuzzy goodness

[pinkjimiphoton]

what the hell izzit? well, its an npn ge fuzz. its got some elements of the fuzz face, and some of the bazz fuss (sorta) and it makes a bitchin' gated fuzz. the first knob adjusts the biasing of q1 which is starved mostly off. its weird. i reverse biased the ge diodes from the bazz fuss cuz i liked the sound better.
the second stage's bias/gate/starve control lets you dial in a LOT of sounds, BUT at some settings its noisy as hell.
the 404's are great sounding transistors, ubiquitous and cheap, but they have an unusual pinout, and the stuff attached is all for these specific transistors.

mac was looking for that "spirit in the sky" kinda fuzztone... this will do it.

try it on your breadboard and see whatya think. hfe's are both around 100.

the knobs are wicked interactive, and it loves to scream. if anybody is brave enough to @#$% with it, let me know.

peace
#FuzzyGoodness

and yes, the name is a joke just like liberal komrade was for the "kommie" fuzz face years ago. my bad sense of yuma. oh well.

[Plexi]

Looks nice...I'll try it
Sounds similar to Way Huge's Conquistador?

[pinkjimiphoton]

no idea plexi, never heard one! kinda like... almost a buzz box kind of gated fuzz, you can use the gate pot to literally knock out all the noise, its kinda cool. at some settings it cleans up like a fuzzface, but at those "bias ranges" its real noisy. its better to saturate or starve it i think, i always try to get stuff where it will clean up from the guitar pot. well... this ain't one of those.
its kinda like a bastard mix of big muff....buzzarond and unifuzz

it pretty much will nail the spirit in the sky sound, or with a little tweaking be almost indistinguishable from ed king's sound on incense and peppermints. very chewy 60's fuzz.

at some setting the high e can be a little weak tho. this is Yet Another Continuation of The Stupid Simple Overdriver

its an addiction

look forward to hearing your thoughts, and if ya find areas for improvement i am all ears!

[Plexi]

its kinda like a bastard mix of big muff....buzzarond and unifuzz

You got it... 
Make your conclusion:

I'll try it on proto after lunch

[pinkjimiphoton]

if you like the conquistador, i think you'll enjoy this.

have fun plexi, look forward to reading your thoughts!!

[duck_arse]

hey jimi - if you wind that 5k pot, at min resistance a) the output cap will be listening to the + supply line, which by law has no signal on, and b) the poor transistor will have nothing but its internals resisting between the supply and ground. perhaps you need an added stop/limit resistor.

[pinkjimiphoton]

i tried that bro, and lost some of the effect of the gate.  at the extremes, the knob pretty much cuts off. all the way up, you get a severely gated sound (from the bias being so off) and all the way down kind of a muted saturated sound. but thru the middle there's all kinds of weird stuff to be had.

its real purpose was to bias q2 but i discovered i could also gate it or starve it.
its actually still on the breadboard tho, so i'll try and have a play in between the other stuff i'm messing with today

thanks for the tip. i know its weird, but it actually sounds cool. once it became obvious that it wasn't gonna be like a fuzzface, i just went for the gated fuzz sound instead, which is a first for me with voicing.

it also is relying in part on the leakage of the q's for biasing. it sounds like a cross between the spirit in the sky and incence and peppermints kinda fuzz.

it can definitely be improved!
and i think i am getting why the gate control is so damn noisy. i'll have a look at that too. thanks bro!!!

[diy-tubes]

One note about GT404G (ГТ404Г) - quite rare even in Russia, GT404B (ГТ404Б) have same hFE according to datasheet (60-150).
MP38A (МП38А) with hFE usually measured 70-100 can be good NPN option.

[pinkjimiphoton]

thanks for the great info, ivan!
glad i bought a bunch of 'em then
they really do make nice sounding fuzz transistors, but MAN, they are HUGE!!!

[diy-tubes]

Big parts - big sound.
That's why we love DOA and big tubes like KT88. 

[pinkjimiphoton]

hahah these ones are HUGE!! they're like the size of the last joint of my pinky!!

checkin out your store bro, nice selection at great prices, i gotta surf it a little harder when i get the chance.

just bought 40 more of them ГТ404Г i have a few variants but these ones seem to sound the best to my ear. wicked consistent too,
all hfe's around 100 +/- 20 points or so

[digi2t]

One note about GT404G (ГТ404Г) - quite rare even in Russia, GT404B (ГТ404Б) have same hFE according to datasheet (60-150).
MP38A (МП38А) with hFE usually measured 70-100 can be good NPN option.

I have a bunch of the G's and a bunch of the B's, and the G's all seem to come in with lower leakage than the B's. The B's are still generally quite good, falling in the 250 to 400ua leakage range, and the G's are usually always under 250ua, hovering around the 150ua mark.

Now... that's just what I have in my stock, and could be purely coincidental, so take that with a grain of germanium.

Regardless, I've used them in a Buzzaround, a Gemini III, and two Two Face fuzz boxes, and they are fantastika! For PNP, the 402's are wicked good as well.

[pinkjimiphoton]

and could be purely coincidental, so take that with a grain of germanium.

[mac]

mac was looking for that "spirit in the sky" kinda fuzztone... this will do it.

On-the-fly biasing, lots of sounds in there.

To get closer to SITS I had to change the output cap to 10n to match the resonance of the speaker I used.
I tried it with low and medium leakage (2n1114 and 2sd72k) with no re-biasing needed.

mac

[digi2t]

No SPT vid??

What the fook?!

[Yata]

Would substituting 2n1306's be at all possible with this design?

[pinkjimiphoton]

No SPT vid??

What the fook?!

hahaha i let my rhythm guitarist try it. he won't give it back. lololol

so i gotta build another one. one of these days, there's gonna be a huge backlog of SPTs bro lol

i'll be building this up maybe today or tomorrow again. figured out the noise problem i thought i had... when ya rolled back the guitar, the noise went up, right?

turned out to be a bad ground in one of the cables on my bench. all my GOOD shit lives with my stage gear...

so gonna be sending one of these out to my avant garde guitarista bro winston psmith down in delaware.

it sounds @#$%in KILLER with the gate up into a big delay. huge. 'uger than 'uge...

[pinkjimiphoton]

Would substituting 2n1306's be at all possible with this design?

hi yata, yeah, any old ge should work, but i think 1306's are pnp not npn, so (if so) reverse any polarized components.
also, the 404's use a weird pinout.... from low to high, its eCb instead of the more common eBc ... but as long as ya twist the legs around, should work fine.
i'd start with the leakiest crap ya got, and then swap q's until ya like it. due to the nature of the biasing/gating, you can get quite a few sounds out of any q's you use.

please by all means let me know how ya make out if ya mess with it.
i didn't think it was much more than a simple fun little circuit til Wes started using it live. he ditched all his dirt except his tube screamer for this thing. surprises the hell out of me how much he gets out of it.

[brianq]

Yea! Where's the Stupid Pedal Trick???


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[rutabaga bob]

I second the motion!  SPT!  SPT!  SPT!