Sooo...has anyone taken on building a Kay Fuzz F-1?

[sekim]

I did it and it came out great. Happy to share a few ideas how to make it work if anyone is interested in this pedal. LOL, and if not I understand, its good for exactly one song (Elevation by U2). Talk about "one trick pony" hardware, but what a trick!

[iainpunk]

isn't it a Super Fuzz clone with the tone section chopped off?

its good for a few genres; doom metal, stoner rock and shoegaze (maybe punk)

cheers

[roseblood11]

It's been used on a lot of songs...
Listen to some of Daniel Lanois' recordings. Didn't he even name a song after it?

I've been planning to build a clone for ten years now, etched a pcb, but never used it.

[sekim]

isn't it a Super Fuzz clone with the tone section chopped off?

its good for a few genres; doom metal, stoner rock and shoegaze (maybe punk)

cheers

It's based on an Ibanez standard fuzz with no I/O buffering and a very unsophisticated "wah" section on the output.

[sekim]

Listen to some of Daniel Lanois' recordings. Didn't he even name a song after it?

Interestingly he doesn't use the sweep in "Orange Kay", and it sounds like a stock F-1.

[sekim]

For those interested, here is one way to implement a stock sounding F-1 with available parts. The 100K sweep section mod allows for use with some expression pedals. I bought an On Stage expression pedal (100K sweep pot) and removed the adjustment pot and placed the F-1 board in the expression pedal housing. To get the U2 "Elevation" tone replace the 22K in the tone sweep section with 10K. Fine tuning the 2K trimmer (labeled 2K VR) is where you can make some magic happen with these.

[radio]

https://trabantland.wordpress.com/2010/03/27/rab-fuzz-project/

Another documentation of the Kay Fuzz

[iainpunk]

It's based on an Ibanez standard fuzz with no I/O buffering and a very unsophisticated "wah" section on the output.

yes, and the Ibanez Standard Fuzz is a 'clone' of the Super Fuzz, with a Jfet input gain stage instead of 2 bipolar transistors. the kay fuzz has only a single transistor in its input gainstage

that's not supposed to be a wah, but a variable bass cut.

cheers

[sekim]

It's based on an Ibanez standard fuzz with no I/O buffering and a very unsophisticated "wah" section on the output.

yes, and the Ibanez Standard Fuzz is a 'clone' of the Super Fuzz, with a Jfet input gain stage instead of 2 bipolar transistors. the kay fuzz has only a single transistor in its input gainstage

that's not supposed to be a wah, but a variable bass cut.

cheers

Its a variable mid to hi cut that goes from a band cut to a shelf. A "sort of wah" if you will. Below are response models of the sweep section with different settings of the pot:

[sekim]

https://trabantland.wordpress.com/2010/03/27/rab-fuzz-project/

Another documentation of the Kay Fuzz

That article mentions the differences between silicon and germanium clipping diodes (he prefers germanium). A silicon diode won't clip the signal in this circuit because the paired silicon transistors don't output enough AC voltage to drive them into clipping. The germanium D9Ks do clip. But the choice for those in particular was purely because I have a pile of them on hand... 

[iainpunk]

thats more like the opposite of a wah effect

its basically a bridge T filter with extras, and the highpass side of the filter is what you change around

cheese

[sekim]

thats more like the opposite of a wah effect

its basically a bridge T filter with extras, and the highpass side of the filter is what you change around

cheese

The "wah" description comes from Kay's ad copy from the era... In any case it isn't a bass cut. Cheese.