any ideas on what c828a transistors are?

[Austin73]

any ideas on what c828a transistors are?

Found 2 in my shin-ei wah just wondered if anybody new what they were or similar available before i have to rip apart my pedal lol

Cheers

Austin

[Austin73]

now found them, they are 2sc828 which could be equivalent to nte 199? any how not to worry

Aus

[Mark Hammer]

All the ones I've ever had had an hfe around 250-300 or so.

[Austin73]

cheers mark , i'm quite new to this but 2n3904 are about 200 so should i try for something more gainy?

[Paul Marossy]

BC109s might work.

[Mark Hammer]

2N5088s are fine, as are probably 2N4124s,  BC546/547/549.

[Paul Marossy]

I was going to suggest 2N5088s, but I thought the gain might be too high...

[Mark Hammer]

The gain is not intrinsic to the transistor, but in how you set them up.  A 2N5088 will do what 2SC828 does.

[alderbody]

I think the C828's have a different pinout than the typical EBC found in 5088's and similar.

you'd better keep that on mind. 

[Austin73]

Yeah i think the pinout is different than normal , When you look at the PCB they are in the position is a bit wonky almost like tehy designed it for different transistors and had to ben these to fit! lol

[Paul Marossy]

The gain is not intrinsic to the transistor, but in how you set them up.  A 2N5088 will do what 2SC828 does.

Yes, but in my experience, transistors are similar to tubes in some ways. Take a lower gain transistor out of a circuit and replace it with a higher gain one, and you will have a little more gain because the transistor itself has more gain. That's all dependent on the circuit, of course. This has definitely proved true in my experiements with wah circuits.

[Mark Hammer]

Yeah.  I wanted to clarify for folks, however, that transistors are not like miniature gain stages with some preset gain amount.  You know, stick this one in and you get a gain of 5, stick that one in and you get a gain of 200.  When it comes to distortion, as well, our friend the Fuzz Face clearly illustrates that high hfe is not necessarily equivalent to superb fuzz.

Here is a quick cut and paste comparison of a couple of regularly-encountered 2SC types from a Japanese transistor manual I have.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v474/mhammer/TRANCOMP.jpg

[Paul Marossy]

OK, Mark, I think we are on the same page.   

[Mark Hammer]

Never doubted it for a second, bro.