Fuzz Face Germanium Transistor tone difference?

[Triffid]

I have built a couple germanium transistor fuzz faces now and tried three different types of Ge trannies (AC128, 2SB176, 2SB324) and I also have a '69 that has NKT275.  I picked my trannies according to the technique described in the "Technology of the Fuzz Face" article and biased them all the same.

I have hooked them up together and switched back and forth and honestly there is almost no difference in tone.  In fact, I told my wife to blindly listen and tell me which one sounds better and she honestly thought I was just switching the same one on and off.  

Has anyone else noticed that there really is not that much tone difference in these different trannies... especially not enough to justify the apparent demand for certain types?

FYI... I had the best tranny success with the shipment of 2SB324's that I got.  I ordered 15 and 12 of the were in the acceptable leakage range AND between 60 and 135 hfe.  the other 3 were just barely over 300mA leakage.

[petemoore]

The one's I tried and got to bias all Fuzzed just fine. But Yeah...
 Q1 doesn't seem to like the higher gain ones,  
 I don't know about the 'fancy ones you have, but going from NTE"s to a SB matched set made a pronounced difference.
 Much more saturated crunch, and output, different tone and harmonic content.

[brett]

Hi.  Maybe I'm a skeptic, but I strongly suspect that the different effects people ascribe to different transistors are in fact due to differences in hFE, bandwidth, etc.  You can get quite different sounds by choosing high and low hFE AC128s.  If two transistors have the same electrical characteristics, they are the same, no matter whether it says something different on the cans or not.  In my opinion Ge transistors are such simple devices, it is not surprising that different models with similar specs sound VERY similar.  (likewise, 99 times out of 100 a 2N3904 or PN100 can replace any audio Si NPN transistor).

just my 2c