Dirty sanchez= Brilliant design

[Auke Haarsma]

thanks man! I'll try this when I get home (just started another day at work...)

[Yun]

Sure thing, mr.Pong- not a problem, man. 

How many fuzz boxes have you built eh?  You're going to be very pleased with this one, man. 

[Yun]

so, i FINALLY finished my third dirty sanchez. 

I built it with the latest schematic that i made (with sag control, Scoop control, compression control). 

This one is my faveorite one (so far  ). 

Here's my values:

Input cap:  100uf (no it's not a typo); i was trying to squeeze every bit of sustain out of it that i could.  after running out of caps, i laughed at the 100uf cap that i found wedged between my pedal-board, so i popped that sucker in just for giggles.  Well- for some reason it sounds AWESOME!!!!!!  I get TONS of sustain, and it's not muddy at all. 

Scoop values:  I found this OLD sprague cap laying around (.001uf) , so i used that for the .001uf cap.  I used a 22K as aposed to the 15K resistor in the scoop stack.  This is a VERY responsive, useful, sinfully nasty "tone" stack, man.  It can do anywhere from sounding like a creammy Big Muff (no, not a typo either), Over-driven Mixer tones (like Nirvana's territorial pissings, Frog brigade's David makalaston, Cream's strange brew), and anything and everything in between.  The texture control has a lot to do with what this scoop mod can do.  the ONLY downside to this is that you will loose volume tremendouseley. 

Another addition that i made:  i put The Yun's rocket booster in front of the circuit.  It just drives it even further.  I didn't really need it in there, but i have a billion Of em made, so i thaught "what the heck". 

Finally after i burnt out my drill press for the third damn time (     ) , i remembered that i have tons of old USA BMP enclosures, so- i put this circuit in the BMP enclosure.  Thank god that i did, i wouldn't have had room for all these knobs 

So, yeah- i'm in debt to mr dragon.  Hey man; i owe you one......or a billion. 

[tcobretti]

I built mine, and I like it quite a bit.  Initially I used D-fly's values, but it was gating the guitar a little too much for me.  I switched the biasing resistors on the second two trannies to 100k, which helped, and then I replaced Q1 with an MPSA18, which pretty much made it perfect for me.  It is installed in the guitar, so the Gain pot is a trimpot, but I'm surprised how the gain pot affects the sound.  My 2 cents is that this pedal is a close second to the FF for flexibility; I suspect it can be tuned to suit just about anyone's needs.

My strong recommendation to anyone who builds it is to bread board it first, then massage the values to find what works for you.  Many mods have been listed in this thread that will help you find your Dirty Sanchez.

[Dragonfly]

so, i FINALLY finished my third dirty sanchez. 

I built it with the latest schematic that i made (with sag control, Scoop control, compression control). 

This one is my faveorite one (so far  ). 

Here's my values:

Input cap:  100uf (no it's not a typo); i was trying to squeeze every bit of sustain out of it that i could.  after running out of caps, i laughed at the 100uf cap that i found wedged between my pedal-board, so i popped that sucker in just for giggles.  Well- for some reason it sounds AWESOME!!!!!!  I get TONS of sustain, and it's not muddy at all. 

Scoop values:  I found this OLD sprague cap laying around (.001uf) , so i used that for the .001uf cap.  I used a 22K as aposed to the 15K resistor in the scoop stack.  This is a VERY responsive, useful, sinfully nasty "tone" stack, man.  It can do anywhere from sounding like a creammy Big Muff (no, not a typo either), Over-driven Mixer tones (like Nirvana's territorial pissings, Frog brigade's David makalaston, Cream's strange brew), and anything and everything in between.  The texture control has a lot to do with what this scoop mod can do.  the ONLY downside to this is that you will loose volume tremendouseley. 

Another addition that i made:  i put The Yun's rocket booster in front of the circuit.  It just drives it even further.  I didn't really need it in there, but i have a billion Of em made, so i thaught "what the heck". 

Finally after i burnt out my drill press for the third damn time (     ) , i remembered that i have tons of old USA BMP enclosures, so- i put this circuit in the BMP enclosure.  Thank god that i did, i wouldn't have had room for all these knobs 

So, yeah- i'm in debt to mr dragon.  Hey man; i owe you one......or a billion. 

Sounds like you've modded it into one heck of a cool fuzz !  Now I'm gonna have to build a deluxe version !   

[Dragonfly]

I'm surprised how the gain pot affects the sound.

The gain pot REALLY is the key. At lower setings you get that big "wall of sound" fuzz, but as you turn it up, you get progressively into more octave up and ring mod-ish type fuzztones. Its a cruel, nasty beast ! 

[tcobretti]

I'm surprised how the gain pot affects the sound.

The gain pot REALLY is the key. At lower setings you get that big "wall of sound" fuzz, but as you turn it up, you get progressively into more octave up and ring mod-ish type fuzztones. Its a cruel, nasty beast ! 

To clarify, it's sounds like an octave fuzz, but there is little or no octave.  It's just a very square wave fuzz when the gain is maxed.

You guys really should build this if you like fuzz.

[Dragonfly]

Yun, or anyone else building this.

Try putting a germaium diode "parallel" to R3...put in on a switch....

tell me what you think ..i havent tried it, but may help accent/add the upper octave...

Also...on R2 (the gain / texture" pot....put a small resistor (probably something like 4k7) between lug 1 and groound, so the knob doesnt shut the effect off.

another idea....at the output, you could try this...

It will definitely cut some signal, but may be a nice EASY alternative to the "scoop mod" or a BM style tonestack.

AC

[mountainking]

I haven't built this circuit, but try this anyway. Put a .1uf cap in series with the output of Q2 and then put a 100k resistor from the base of Q3 to ground. It may give some interesting results, maybe not. Let me know if any of you try it out.

[Auke Haarsma]

So I flipped the trannies and awakened the beast some nice dirty but also thick fuzz sounds hide in this build.

I tried these transistors:
2n5088
2n4407
2n222a (my favourite)
2n3904
2n5089

I got a couple of questions though:
-Fuzz control does change the character of the fuzz, but also hugely drops volume. This makes it unusable for me. Did I wire it incorrectly or does an increase in fuzz always result in drop of volume? (Volume pot at max ofcourse)
-scoop control doesn't do anything with the sounds. What kind of effect could I expect from this control?
-sag control acts as a tonecontrol (lowering sag filters low freq out). Normal?
-input sound is cut off harsely. I think this is called 'gating'. You can clearly hear the gate, I'd like to lower this gating, so there's still some sound coming through when I turn down the volumepot on my guitar. How can I do this? What specific section in the build handles the gating?
-I got this freaking octaving sound at some specific setting, where you'd only hear the octave and not the original tone. That was really cool. No, this is not a question it was just freaking cool!

@Yun: it's the 2nd fuzz I've build. First one was a Ge PNP fuzz-kit. Couldn't get it to work correctly. I opted for the dirty sanchez this time because in getting it to work from scratch (where DragonFly and you made the scratch;) ) would teach me a lot about building fuzzes.

[slacker]

My dirty sanchez isn't the same as the one you've built so they might no behave the same, but on mine the fuzz control doesn't affect the volume. If I turn it down past about half way the gating effect increases but the volume stays about the same.
Mine hasn't got the sag control but it has a similar pot wired just to the collector of Q1 and that does the same thing. At minimum resistance the sound is thin and I get the best octave effect. As the resistance is increased the sound thickens up and sounds more like a fuzz face.
On mine the gating effect is controlled by Q3, to get rid of the gating I added the resistor between the emittor of Q3 and ground. This is R2 on your PCB layout, on mine 330R wasn't enough to completely stop the gating so try increasing this. I originally tried 1k which completely got rid of the gating but made the pedal too noisy, so I reduced it down to 560R. I put a switch on mine to short this resistor out so you can have the gating sounds if you want them.

[Auke Haarsma]

Ej Slacker, I put in about 870R at R2 and the gating indeed is less now. I also noticed the fuzz sounds much better when I only feed 3V into it (instead of 9V). Does this mean the voltage on the Q's is too high? In wich case I should up the R's in front of the Q's to lower the Voltage reaching the Q;s?

[Dragonfly]

Here's MY Dirty Sanchez, with mods and customizations for my own needs...MY OWN PERSONAL SANCHEZ !!! 

HERE'S a 5 MINUTE (!) soundclip...chords, solos, self oscillating madness...I'm playing and turning knobs...some changes are subtle, some aren't !

AC

[Yun]

Here's MY Dirty Sanchez, with mods and customizations for my own needs...MY OWN PERSONAL SANCHEZ !!! 

HERE'S a 5 MINUTE (!) soundclip...chords, solos, self oscillating madness...I'm playing and turning knobs...some changes are subtle, some aren't !

AC

Far out, man!  What's the mods that you did for your own needs eh?  It sounds almost exactly like mine (the 3'rd one i built, my faveorite one)

You like the scoop mod too eh?  thought that it would sound good    . 

What's your rig eh?  In a nutshell, mine is: 

Guitar-----> rack compressor----> dirty sanchez--->Rack EQ (31 band)---->old Peavy tube amp (touch dynamics controls) . 

And it sounds almost exactly like yours, but it's more overdriven mixer style/synth textured. 

Very nice soundclip!  i'll have to make a sound clip of mine one of these days, man 

[SteveB]

Here's MY Dirty Sanchez, with mods and customizations for my own needs...MY OWN PERSONAL SANCHEZ !!! 

Wow! I've got to build one of these! What a wide variety of fuzz sounds in a little package.

BTW, that enclosure is happening, too!

Steve

[tcobretti]

Ok, that sound clip sounded pretty freaking good, so I'm gonna build DS#2.  I modded the previously posted layout to reflect the final batch of changes.  If anybody sees any problems with the layout let me know.  I'm gonna build this one this weekend.  Fixr, I hope you don't mind me modding your layout, if so PM me and I'll take it down.

[fixr1984]

Ok, that sound clip sounded pretty freaking good, so I'm gonna build DS#2.  I modded the previously posted layout to reflect the final batch of changes.  If anybody sees any problems with the layout let me know.  I'm gonna build this one this weekend.  Fixr, I hope you don't mind me modding your layout, if so PM me and I'll take it down.

I dont mind one bit. In fact I feel like I actually helped out a little bit by posting it in the first place.
Let us know if it works, i havent made it yet.

[Dragonfly]

Ok, that sound clip sounded pretty freaking good, so I'm gonna build DS#2.  I modded the previously posted layout to reflect the final batch of changes.  If anybody sees any problems with the layout let me know.  I'm gonna build this one this weekend.  Fixr, I hope you don't mind me modding your layout, if so PM me and I'll take it down.

The one in the soundclip is a bit different...

Q1: MPSA13
Q2, Q3: 2N5089
EMITTER OF Q1 HAS A 100 OHM BETWEEN IT AND GROUND
EMMITER OF Q2 HAS A 100 OHM BETWEEN IT AND GROUND
EMITTER OF Q3 HAS A 390 OHM BETWEEN IT AND GROUND
Q2 AND Q3 COLLECTOR RESISTORS ARE 47K
SAG POT IS 10K, BUT I WILL PROBABLY GO WITH A 20K TO GET MORE EFFECT FROM IT
SCOOP I USED  8K2 AND 18K RESISTORS
10uF INPUT CAP

[tcobretti]

Doh!

[Dragonfly]

Doh!

well, Yuns mods evidently sound similar, so i'm sure those are just finr too

AC