All this time, a Fuzz Face!

[nelson]

I have built one NPN germ fuzz face, but a friend liked it so much he just had to have it. I have been meaning to build another one...

[Steben]

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.

Well, those count for two!
I mean "fuzz face" as a blue print, not the dunlop-mayer "explicits". The ones you've built are probably more quality-for-the-bucks projects!

This thread brings up the story of my first FF. I was doing the germanium thing without trimmers. Bad thing. Then my "HiFi-"dad said: "hey! pop some low-noise silicons in it!". Of course he wasn't on the same mojo-level as I was, but I did try them. Bang! Instant fuzz, almost 4.5V on the collector. It seems that the stock resistor circuits work great for almost any medium gain silicon.
It was a great "well i'll be d*mned"- moment. Although silicon as it was, I was trilled with my first decent tone! I think one of the secrtes of the Fuzz Face lies in the functioning of the circuit itself, whether it's germanium or not. It found it also in RG's "Tech of the FF" article.

[MartyMart]

The best "Si" fuzz I have is Dragonfly's "Smooth silicon Fuzz" which lives in his layouts/schematics folder
above.
"Gus's" FF is close too, most of the rest "suck" compared to a well setup Ge FF  !
RM's FF which I made as a "negative ground" NPN with OC140's sounds GORGEOUS 
The "Rock Face" makes almost  any temp increase negligable when using "Ge"
They are just a bit "fiddly" to get right, but once leakage/gain are sorted, then use trimpots
and have fun !

MM.

[Melanhead]

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

here's my tweaked silicone fuzz called the "Full Beard" ... All fuzzes sound different though

http://users.eastlink.ca/~melanhead/MP3/FullBeard.mp3

[MartyMart]

Rockface, Ge FF :
http://aronnelson.com/userfiles/RockFaceFuzz.mp3

Univox Supafuzz Si Monster !!
http://aronnelson.com/userfiles/univoxsuperfuzz-1.mp3
http://aronnelson.com/userfiles/univoxsuperfuzz2.mp3

BTW Melanhead's playing is about 1000% better  !! 

Marty.

[Melanhead]

Rockface, Ge FF :
http://aronnelson.com/userfiles/RockFaceFuzz.mp3

Univox Supafuzz Si Monster !!
http://aronnelson.com/userfiles/univoxsuperfuzz-1.mp3
http://aronnelson.com/userfiles/univoxsuperfuzz2.mp3

BTW Melanhead's playing is about 1000% better  !! 

Marty.

ahhhh, shucks ... 

[z-zero]

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

thanks for the reply.
Paul.

Depends on how your biasing the trannys I think... Try um both and see what floats your boat, some people swear by the 500K volume pot, as for me I'm still playing the one I built "stock". I'll start messing with stuff once I really get to know the base I'm starting from so I can decide whats a good change, or a bad change...

Just realized you might not have seen links to the FF tech article, so here it is:

http://www.geofex.com/Article_Folders/fuzzface/fftech.htm

Also a link to Joe D's site:

http://www.diystompboxes.com/analogalchemy/index.html

The FF calculator is under the EMH section, lots 'o' cool tools in there... Thanks Joe!

z-zero