Gut shots of unknown fuzz pedal

[nightingale]

I was at a party at a friends studio.
I took a few gut shots of this nasty splatty fuzz that was hanging around the place.
I only had a few moments to trace it,  so forgive me for the bootleg schematic that I drew.  Plus I had had about 4 beers,  and was more interested in socializing than reverse engineering this box.

In some ways the schematic I drew is similar to a "foxy lady".

I am confident someone will chime in and shed some light on this one.



















Actually the tropical fish capacitors are .1uf  not .01uf as the schematic shows.

I just noticed one of the .01uf caps is not accounted for on my schematic.. It looks like is might be connected to the collector of Q2?

[petemoore]

  I typed a bunch of other theories, perhaps you could verify the connections more certainly, Q2's collector going un-DC-biased, no connection but a DC blocking cap there, indicates either a 'radical' [non gain stage] wiring, or...perhaps one of the top two resistors is meant for Q2CBias, the little squoze in line there just above Q2's base?
  Also the line that connects the 10k to itself [defeating it's purpose...maybe cut that
  and hook Q2C/.002 up to the 10k/47k.
  calls for a breadboard or at least a review of the schematic against the originals board.

[Dan N]

Thanks for the photos!

http://users.rio.com/senorris/junk/orp.jpg

[Rodgre]

I have one of these fuzzes. It's a pretty cool and splatty fuzz.

It is sometimes known as the Wurlitzer Fuzzer Buzzer. Clark also branded it. I believe the circuit is the same as a Lafeyette Radio fuzz schem I found online years ago.

Similar to this one at AMZ too:  http://www.muzique.com/schem/heathkit.gif

Roger

[nightingale]

The humps are jumping over Q2's base if that makes any sense?
I should have drawn the 100k resistor connecting directly to the .002uf cap.

it was hard to visualize at the time.

[jimbob]

Now thats the spirit! I love when people take pics- but getting under the board and drawing a schematic? Now thats dedication. I will try harder to do the same! I'm serious! I love when pics are taken etc...I'm not out to steal anyones ideas or whatever, but i get curious ( I can't think of a good analogy for this one.)
Anyways, nice work nightingale!

[Dan N]

Just some quick fooling around:

http://users.rio.com/senorris/junk/fuzz_three.gif

There's a flying 220K resistor on one of the pots.

edit- sorry, that 33K is 22K. Duh.

[nightingale]

There's a flying 220K resistor on one of the pots.

It was connected to the ground lug on the other pot. I have it marked as a 22k in my dirty schemmo..


That makes up for the missing .1uf cap. It goes to ground from the 47k.

nice work Dan N!

[Dan N]

Hey, a little reworking of the FY-2 schematic gets this:

http://users.rio.com/senorris/junk/orph.gif

Fuzzrite family fuzz!

[MartyMart]

I stuck this on the breadboard ( don't use it enough ! ) and it does "work" but here's
my findings :

First I wired up the 22k and 47k as 50k/100k trim pots
The largest resistor I had was a 6m8, so that's replacingthe 10m
Used 5088's first, and they biased in fine but the volume was a bit low with
both pots as 50k's
Sounded very thin and "rubbery" if that makes sense, so I increased the .0022 output
cap to a .010 also tried a .047 which was nice too.
The first pot ( tone? ) is very subtle, rolls off a tiny bit of top but reduces volume also.

Then tried a pair of npn Ge OC140's .... BINGO !
They are lower gain, ( 90 - 150 ) but I get twice the volume and a more convincing "vintage" fuzz
sound too.
It's quite similar to the FY2 , need to sort the tone pot wire-up though, something wrong
here, could the 220k value be wrong ? would a 22k make more sense here ...

MM.

[MartyMart]

OK, ditched the 220k and placed the Univox style "notch" filter at the ouput, switchable.
Now the tone/fuzz pot makes more sense and "blends in" some signal from the first stage
so can clean things up a bit.
Output cap is a 47n ( 0.047uf )
Also got a volume increase here too ....
Q1, I added a 5k trim pot from emitter to ground as a "Gain" control, this could be an external pot as it
works well.
2N3114 Si trannies also work well, they are large metal cap devices, also with quite low hfe.
Using high gain trannies makes no sense here, things just get quiet and muffled ?

MM.

[nightingale]

Cool,
I played the pedal for while at the studio through 2x59bassmans RI jumpered together. The output/volume was very large,  and I remember the "tone" control having a very drastic effect.  I will drop by there later today to see if I can borrow the pedal for some better pics/tracing and even some voltages. I could not find any schematics on the web, It would be nice to lock this one down and add it to Aron's collection.

[aron]

Wow, amazing post and interesting looking pedal. It almost looks like an EH product.

[MartyMart]

Wow, amazing post and interesting looking pedal. It almost looks like an EH product.

I thought that too when I first looked at the case !

MM.

[Dan N]

Way to go Marty! You were up and fuzzing before I even went to bed.

I changed that resistor back to nightingale's original value. I can see the volume pot is 100K, but it's not on the schematic.

nightingale, if you do get another look, it would be nice to know the transistor numbers and the tone pot value, as well as any doublechecking of this preliminary schematic. Thanks very much to you and your friend!

I don't have my photos on my hard drive. The PCB looks familiar to me. It may have been stuck in fuzzes of other names?

[Sir H C]

I will have to open up my Clark as I thought that it had a different circuit in it. That one looks to be early 69 with the late 68 date coded pots.

[tiges_ tendres]

Wow, amazing post and interesting looking pedal. It almost looks like an EH product.

if it is a guild foxey lady, werent they built by mike matthews?  In which case, that might explain the influence on the EH stuff

[Mark Hammer]

My sense is that people are being a little too misled by the folded steel case.  E-H were not alone in using them.  One need only look at the early Maestro fuzz pedals to realize that folded steel was the chassis of the day.  E-H was just falling into line with everyone else.

[nightingale]

(((UPDATE)))

I have the pedal in front of me right now. It is exactly as Dan N suspected: http://users.rio.com/senorris/junk/orph.gif

The tone pot is 1meg, volume pot 100k. There are no markings on the transistors?

[Paul Perry (Frostwave)]

They probably got those unmarked transistors cheap because they were 'out of spec' (that is, low gain suitable for a fuzz, but not what they were trying to make). Back in the day, there were plenty of unmarked Ge transistors around.. and plenty of people trying to get them to work at AM radio frequnecies