Arbiter Fuzz face reissue

[Hungeryhippie]

Hello all,
I thought i'd share it here as it might be of interest to some. I have been given this to have a look at because it is reported to "not sound very good" I havent had a chance to plug it in yet so i couldnt say.


Here is the inside



with PCB flipped



and the schematic i read from it.




Its pretty much as i was expecting, bar for a few things like the cap underside the board and those different resistor values (100k and 820ohm) Is this normal for the reissues or have i read there codes wrong?


But im pretty sure brown - black - yellow- is 100k
and grey - red - brown is 820 ohm

Any info would be apreciated and i hope u like the pics.

[phillip]

They even made more than one version of the reissue!  Here's a picture of another FF reissue that I found on eBay a while back:



You can see several differences between the two reissues here.  Q1's collector resistor is still 33K in this one, but in Hungeryhippie's it's 100K.  In this one the 330/470 resistor is a 1K, but it's 820 in Hungeryhippie's.  Both of these reissues have 6K8 collector resistors on Q2.

I'm not sure what the value of the output capacitor in this one is.  In another reissue a saw a 47nF (0.047uF).  I'm not sure if this one has a capacitor on the bottom of the circuit board or not.  In Hungeryhippie's the two 0.015uF capacitors in parallel work out to be 0.03uF.

I haven't heard one of the reissues either, but it might be worth building

Phillip

[Stuart]

Here's another variant.  It sounds like crap!

[H.Manback]

That one is biased very different than the "original" values I believe. Maybe my schematic is wrong, but I have 33k 470 8k2.

The one the topic starter has seems to have a bigger output cap as well as different biasing. I think this different biasing might give some more gating? seems to me that the base of q2 needs some higher input to open up?

[Outlaws]

I downloaded the layout on GGG because I want to build on of these at some point, but when I was looking at the values of the pots, they seem different than the picture I saw on ebay that was bidding at over $500 as "original".  The eBay one had a 470k output and the one on GGG was 500k.  (I realize things could have been replaced over time)

Not to go off topic, but is the GGG site the "original" ie the Hendrix model?

[Hungeryhippie]

i plugged it in last night. It sounds crap, there is no fuzz. just mild distortion that doent sound good. I forgot to bring into work today the voltages i mesured off the transistors but they were like this

Q1
c = -1.01
b = -0.01
e = 0

q2

c = -1.59
b = -1.01
e = i cant remember this

not very good.

Also from closer examination it appears that Q2 may be round the wrong way. On AC128's does the red dot indicate the emitter or the collector? I am assuming it is the emitter. Either way one of them is reversed. because they both have the red dot facing into the board, i think it is Q2 as on the under side of the board there is "c , b, e" printed on the board and the emitter is indicated to be toward the out side edge of the board.

Has any one else found this with fuzzface's? This is the first "real" one i have come across and im a bit surprised at Arbiter. I wont have enough time till next week to start tweeking it, i was going to record it to get a before and after sound samples.

Thank you phillip for posting your pic of a reissue. And thank you to the others for their responces.

Oh and i'm going to see wilko johnston on thursday night!

[BD13UK]

I  had one of these, suffice to say like Stuart said it sounded ghastly with not a pleasant Fuzz at all, spoke to Dennis Cornell about it and He agreed they were $*&^ so it will need some work to make it sound decent.

[ErikMiller]

Not sure what that's supposed to be a reissue of, but half the component values are pretty far off, even beyond the tweaking range.

The 100K volume pot, while probably making it sound better, is supposed to be 500K.

Is there someone named "Cornell" involved with this "reissue?" I'm wondering about the "Cornell Fuzz" on the trace side of the board.

[BD13UK]

Yes it's Dennis Cornell of http://www.dc-developments.com/ whose name you see on the board, Dennis Cornell is the Guy who makes amps etc for people like Eric Clapton, I think He was also involved in the design of the FF at the beginning however these particular re-issues bear little resemblance soundwise to some of the originals that I heard in the 60's though having said that there were plenty of bad sounding 60's FF's as most people who frequent here will be aware.

[Hungeryhippie]

i have just read the reviews at harmony central.

http://www.harmony-central.com/Effects/Data/Arbiter_England/Fuzz_Face_Reissue-01.html

it seems some one else has had one with a transistor put in round the wrong way.

[analogmike]

HI,

I bought 50 of those, about half had the transistors in upside down! No final testing? The middle leg should be closer to the board. The one in their literature has the transistor in backwards too. Those AC128s wont sound good no matter how you set them up though. Get some generics from small bear, should be much better.

have fun!

[phillip]

I definitely wouldn't mind having one of the enclosures to build a good version of the Fuzz Face in.  I can't believe that they actually sent some of them out with a transistor in the wrong way!  That's...not good!

It's also odd that they use a 100KA volume pot, which will let out a little more high end, but then they also increase the value of the output capacitor.  Wouldn't that more or less negate the effect of using a 100K volume pot?

Phillip

[Hungeryhippie]

Hello all,

Just to up date and conclude this thread.

I have made a new PCB for the the fuzz face, I got some gain matched transistors from Pete Roberts ( thank you pete). Oh and the custom board well why not, who said boards have to be boring?

It sounds really good now, it does all the things u would expect a good fuzz face to do, the guy i did it for hasn't seen it yet but i think he'll be pleased.

Heres some photo's enjoy.

Now i'm thinking may be it should have a clear acrillic base plate instead of the metal one !

[analogmike]

Cool board!!

If any one wants a sunface board to mess with send $1 and a SASE as I have several hundred extras in stock. But no tech support, get that here