All this time, a Fuzz Face!

[z-zero]

Built my first fuzz face, got some low gain silicone trannies, measured the gains, plugged them into Joe D's FF calculator selcted hand measured value resitors closest to what the calculator spit out and presto! Instant tone! Great sound, and to think all this time a simple tweaked fuzz face was all I was really looking for. Not that my search is over, but I feel like I got closer to that sound in my head with the old trusted FF. Definetly got the "feel" I was looking for if that makes sense. Go figure. 

So all you out there who haven't tried a FF yet, just do it and see what you think, I bet you'll be surprised like I was...

z-zero

[Steben]

Yeah, who the h**k around here hasn't tried a FF til now! I'm not talking to the beginners naturally...
c'mon, show yourself! 

I have built 6 til now, including 2 germaniums.

hey z-zero: the best FF I have is with low-gain silicon. Others here around prefer "tweaked" silicon too.

[z-zero]

  That was me until a few days ago. Show yourself or be tarred and feathered! 

I'm liking the silicone stuff to, there seem to be alot of silicone based FF with great repututations, so I have a few more projects to work into. I really like the "feel" of it, very dynamic and touch sensitive, much better than the tube screamer IMHO. Roll the guitar volume back a touch and I get super glassy tones that I can really rip into distortion if I "dig" into my guitar. Requires a bit more finnesse to play it well.

I think part of the reason I hadn't tried one until this week was all the mythology that surrounds the trannies just scared me. 



z-zero

[benfox]

SHHUUURE
That's good
My first project too was a FF witch i tweak quickly to have my own sound

[robotboy]

I'm about 20 pedals into this hobby and still haven't made one. Have you guys done the germanium fuzz fact to compare to the Si?

[Wild Zebra]

  I did the GGG positive ground with medium gain AC128's.  No tweaking, No resitor matching, heck I even soldered the trannies in .  It sounds great, with gobs of fuzz.  I was actually quite surprized how Heavy of a fuzz it had.  I'll have to give a silicon a try, maybe with alittle tweaking this time.

[z-zero]

Definetly measure and calculate with Joe D's awesome fuzz face tool, that made it so easy. Its likely to make any silicone trannies sound their best in the FF, just because you'll be sure you have them biased correctly, tuning them in by ear will be a good thing as well if you want to use trimpots instead of fixed resistors. Nice to see I'm not the only one skipping the FF, makes me feel less silly. 

z-zero

[newperson]

Hi,
I see this is a silly question but,
How do you put in a trimpot instead of fixed resistor?  What are you suppose to do with the third leg of the pot?  And if you tie it to another leg on the pot, does it matter which direction you put the pot in?

And I have not made a FF clone yet.  I just ordered the parts for the MKII TB tonepad version, I am guessing this counts for a FF. 

[roknjohn]

I've built both Ge and Si versions. Like Wild Zebra I used AC128's in the Ge version. Nice tone, kinda creamy sounding if you can say that about a fuzz. Built a couple Si versions, a little too brittle sounding for my liking (others may love this sound, I personally dont!). Until I tried the Axis Face Silicon over at Fuzz Central. Sounds as close to the Ge version as silicon is gonna get in my opinion. Full sounding fuzz without the brittleness of other Si versions.

I would highly recommend the Axis Face Silicon to those who want to build a Fuzz Face for the first time, or can't get their hands on Ge's. You will get the "tone" (or darn close anyway) without having to sort through a handfull of parts. For first timers, you won't have to worry about letting the Ge's stabilize when taking readings or measurements, the Si will be easy to set up.

[TheBigMan]

I haven't built either a Fuzz Face or a Rangemaster.  I never really had much interest in either, but since I found a load of NPN Ge trannies in a job lot of components I've decided to give them a go.

[Melanhead]

Others here around prefer "tweaked" silicon too.

Yup, been there .... high gain tweaked silicon

[z-zero]

Hi,
I see this is a silly question but,
How do you put in a trimpot instead of fixed resistor?  What are you suppose to do with the third leg of the pot?  And if you tie it to another leg on the pot, does it matter which direction you put the pot in?

And I have not made a FF clone yet.  I just ordered the parts for the MKII TB tonepad version, I am guessing this counts for a FF. 

Exactly, just tie the sweeper to one of the legs, the orientation doesn't matter after that. I would imagine the tonebender counts as a fuzz, but the fuzz face usually describes a 2 tranny version of the orignal basic circuit. Consequently originally developed from a vox tonebender, the 2 tranny version. Arbiter likely used that to develop the FF. At least I think thats how the history goes...

z-zero

[newperson]

Another question for you,
Say if you had a 100k resistor, what size pot would you want to use?

thanks for the reply.
Paul.

[Steben]

For Si, I use normal wired pots a lot, tweak and measure the value and then solder the closest value resistor possible (or two resistors in series if necessary).
With Ge however, permanent trimpots are more reliable to tweak a little every day in "real-time".

[ethrbunny]

Sample? This is an older pedal - yes? Whats a good recording find it on? Posting like Yoda I am.

[petemoore]

  I like having that bias pot on top of my Ge FF boxes.,,

[Gus]

http://www.diystompboxes.com/pedals/gusFuzzFace.gif

Make R1 a 1K if you don't want a trim pot.  Si FF don't need the adjustments a Ge version does you can design the circuit to work with many Si transistors without any change of resistor values.

The Ic and gain of both stages has been adjusted so almost any Si small signal transistor will work.  first stage even work well with high gain >500 transistors because of the openloop gain set by both the 10K and 100 ohm resistors.  This was done by math and looking at hfe vs Ic curves.  This was done before the Yaff, note the gain is lower with the 10K and the Ic is higher, Think about it.  Also note the Lowpass set by R9, C4.  Remember there are two gain sections in a FF the first is the feedback R 47k / the guitar mess in parallel with the open loop gain of the first transistor.  If you look at the three tran the guitar mess is the 10K before the ff section

People who have looked at a number of FF type circuits will note how close this is to the Vox one.  The use of the 10K/100 and LP is the biggest change.

[Apehouse]

Yeah, who the h**k around here hasn't tried a FF til now! I'm not talking to the beginners naturally...
c'mon, show yourself! 

Aww man, im the worst of the worst. Not only do i have a bunch of pedals/circuits under my belt but i also have matched transistors from small bear and a pre-etched FF board waiting to go and i still haven't built it. (and i've had em a while!). Everytime i think i'm gona solder in the couple of parts it requires i hear a sound clip or something of a different project someone else is doing and i go, "maybe i should do THAT one next!"
Whew, so many great people with so many great ideas building so many great projects. Man, i love this place!
-greg

[ethrbunny]

Ok.. Im beggin' here.. sample? clip? suggested recording?

[jmusser]

I've built a lot of pedal (probably 50 ), but I've never built a fuzz face. I built Joe Gagan's Easy Face several years ago, and Joe Davisson's Antiquity Fuzz, which are both real facey sounding. Easy Face for tube amp, and the Antiquity for SS. I only have 50 trillion germaniums, so I should at least make a couple to compare to these two.