Resurrecting a Honey Special Fuzz - Voltages?

[AJ2000]

Hi All;

About 10 years ago, or so, I picked up a Honey Special Fuzz at a garage sale for $30 then tossed into a bin and forgot about it.  Was cleaning out the basement, found it, and am trying to get it up and running.....

The phase thing seems to work ok but the distortion is splatty and has low volume - much less than unity at max volume - sounds a bit like a bad octavia, not at all like the the videos I've seen where it should sound like a Superfuzz, more or less, so I'm assuming the problem is in the fuzz part of the circuit.

I found this schematic, which matches the unit exactly and took a couple of voltages:



Does anyone have any voltages to check against or see anything drastically wrong with these?  I'm more familiar with tubes than transistors.....

The switches and other parts all seem to work ok - I'm thinking its a failed part in there somewhere...

Any help is appreciated.

AJ

[ElectricDruid]

Welcome AJ!

Something fishy is going on with your voltages. Q1's collector is tied to Q2's base, but you've got two different voltages for those.

[antonis]

Welcome also..

I believe you've tangled transistors pinout..

[AJ2000]

That was fast!

Sorry - it was late and I had the pinout incorrect in my head:

Here is it revised:

[antonis]

T2 V_BE is quite low but Collector & Emitter stay well for a phase splitter..

[AJ2000]

I remeasured and got 3.63 on the base at T2, so a better voltage difference between the E and B - around 0.6V. 

Does anything typically go in old pedals?  Electrolytic caps dry out or transistors just go?  I could grab a few new caps and start replacing them in the trouble area - no way to tell if they're bad without removing them from the circuit though, is there?

AJ

[Steben]

T2 V_BE is quite low but Collector & Emitter stay well for a phase splitter..

Yes. I'ld say the config of Q1 is very dependent on the transistor. perhaps you could swap 47k for a 100k trimpot.

I've never seen Q5-6-7 config before... Is that a sort of high gain, high impedance setup?

[PRR]

...I've never seen Q5-6-7 config before... Is that a sort of high gain, high impedance setup?...

Somebody was messing with his mind. It is an ordinary high gain, high impedance setup except.... voltage gain is only 6, input impedance is loaded-down to 47k, load impedance is greater than 4k7--- it can't-quite be done in 1 transistor but easy in 2.

[ElectricDruid]

Given that most/all the transistors are arranged with the collector "up", base "in the middle", and emitter "down", could we have the voltages listed in CBE order instead of EBC? It's bugging my OCD something awful...thanks!

Also I'm still seeing Q1 C being different from Q2 B - Is there continuity between those points?

[antonis]

Also I'm still seeing Q1 C being different from Q2 B -

On revised shematic measurements, both sit on 3.33V..

[AJ2000]

Appreciate people having a look - I double checked the voltages and adjusted for OCD (which does make it easier to read against the schematic) - here they are based on today's temperature - battery seems to be slightly higher than yesterday.



I see that these pedals seem to go for a pretty high price online - I'm trying to decide if it's worth just selling it as-is or putting the effort into fixing it and then selling it - working, but not all original....unless or course it roars to life and sounds amazing.....

AJ

[digi2t]

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