Adding a tone control (filter) to a fuzz face.

[ReeceAblaze]

Hello everyone,

Me and my friend are getting into DIY pedals, today we put together a NPN silicon Fuzz Face on a breadboard and were suprised when it actually made noise. We are hoping to begin understanding how parts of fuzz pedals work as we would eventually like to make our own sounds. We thought before jumping in the deep end with our own we could build a fuzz face and now we are thinking of adding a tone control to it. We are just wondering where in the schematic the low pass filter and potentiometer would go?

[Mark Hammer]

Start by reading this:  http://www.geofex.com/Article_Folders/fuzzface/fffram.htm

What sort of tone control are you hoping to implement?  Just a simple treble cut or something else?

[mac]

A treble cut,



mac

[ReeceAblaze]

Start by reading this:  http://www.geofex.com/Article_Folders/fuzzface/fffram.htm

What sort of tone control are you hoping to implement?  Just a simple treble cut or something else?

We want to add the tone control from a Proco rat it's just whereabouts in the circuit it needs to go that we can't figure out

[Mark Hammer]

Given that, the simplest thing is probably to use what gets referred to as the SWTC.  Given that the standard Fuzz Face volume pot is 500k, stick a 470R resistor in series with a 10k pot, before the Volume pot.  The 470R goes to one outside lug of the 10k, and the other outside lug goes to the Volume pot.  The wiper of the additional pot goes to a capacitor, which goes to ground.  The cap can be anything between, say, 15nf to 68nf, depending on your tastes.  That will do what you want without interfering with the FF too much.

[pinkjimiphoton]

A treble cut,



mac

i like this one

[Mark Hammer]

That'll work too.  I've used it successfully on a Shin-Ei FY-2.  It's not "cutting" the treble, in the way that a filter does, as much as simply not amplifying it as much as the rest of the spectrum.

[pinkjimiphoton]

to me, those kind of setups seem a bit less lossy. i'm still messing with making snubbers adjustable to use as tone controls. i've been surprised how well it can work for less loss than most "standard" approaches

[mac]

i like this one

mac