tone bender transistor choice help - is 140hfe to high?

[ulysses]

hey guys

i am building a tb mkII from my layout i made recently.

i have 3 ge transistors. the first 2 are 70hfe and the 3rd is 140hfe.

if i put the sustain half way, when i play quietly it sounds like there is no distortion at all, and when i hammer on it sounds quite farty like it is misbiased. when the volume of the decaying string drops it sounds crackly. i have biased the 3rd transistor to 4.5 volts with a 10 trim pot.

with the gain right up, it sounds ok for solos, but then gets really muddy when you play more than one string..

is 140hfe to high for the tb mkII? i have read that 80-100 hfe is best..

any ideas?

cheers
ulysses

[petemoore]

  Try a lower gain transistor and see if you like it.
  I'd test the voltages on the Fuzz Face [I guess we're typing about a 2knob Bender, so that'd be Q's 2 and 3 of TB], the descript describes a misbiased stage, possibly the first stage, compare voltages to Tonebender 'ballpark' bias points.

[ulysses]

hey pete

yeah i had one of the transistors around the wrong way.. in the first stage.. i never get on with datasheets that dont give 3d views of pinouts

i still have a problem.. it still sounds farty like something is bisbiased..

is this what you would expect a tbmkii to sound like with 70-70-140hfe? anyone got any samples of pedals made with similar hfes?

cheers
ulysses