Death by Audio Fuzz War schematic

[gigimarga]

Hello,

Has anyone a schematic of this fabulous fuzz or some ideas about tweaking it?
Both that I found on "another site" seems to have some problems (anyway, it's a strange design with all NPN transistors reversed: C to ground and E to V+).
It has a fabulous sustain and a raw tone, but i have some problems with gating...

Thx a lot all!

[gigimarga]

 

[jrod]

Here is a whole thread on that duder duder: http://freestompboxes.org/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2692

[gigimarga]

Here is a whole thread on that duder duder: http://....org/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2692

Thx jrod...that's from where I've started...the last post is mine.
My problem is that both posted schematics are wrong and mine sounds like crap...I am very interreseted if someone experienced can verify them (in a post someone said to use 820K instead of the 430K resistors and it sounds better by far) and, the best, if he can to suggest a hFE for them because in Jack Orman's article about the reverse biasing he said that the hFE matters a lot in this case.

[Gus]

Read the Wikipedia article on biasing and "The Art of Electronics" sections on biasing.   Look at the bias used.

[gigimarga]

Read the Wikipedia article on biasing and "The Art of Electronics" sections on biasing.   Look at the bias used.

I've read it, but i can't understand too much

[Paul Marossy]

That's a wild sounding fuzz pedal. 

[gigimarga]

That's a wild sounding fuzz pedal. 

I like it a lot...I never heard a compression like that...a big muff with a dynacomp is a little child comparing to fuzz war
Anyway, I can post one schematic here, if it's OK.

[Gus]

 A.G. posted at the other forum about the circuit.

[gigimarga]

A.G. posted at the other forum about the circuit.

I know...that's what i talked about.
But after looking carefully at the gutshots, I think that's wrong because all the transistors are reversed.

[MKULTRA]

A.G. posted at the other forum about the circuit.

Forgive my ignorance.....what other forum ?

[Paul Marossy]

A.G. posted at the other forum about the circuit.

Forgive my ignorance.....what other forum ?

www.f-r-e-e-s-t-o-m-p-b-o-x-e-s dot org (remove the hypens)

[gigimarga]

Anyway, can we start to work on it?

[Celadine]

I breadboarded it with no problems, AG's schematic, just reversed C-E on transistors.  Also, the last two diodes and R19 (the 27k connected to last diode pair) are not used in the circuit!  AG tried to be helpful and figure out how they could be connected, thats why its on his schematic.  Hope you can get good noise out of it!

[Taylor]

I breadboarded it with no problems, AG's schematic, just reversed C-E on transistors.  Also, the last two diodes and R19 (the 27k connected to last diode pair) are not used in the circuit!  AG tried to be helpful and figure out how they could be connected, thats why its on his schematic.  Hope you can get good noise out of it!

Are they in there just as a red herring for reverse engineers, or...? That's funny, if so.

[gigimarga]

I breadboarded it with no problems, AG's schematic, just reversed C-E on transistors.  Also, the last two diodes and R19 (the 27k connected to last diode pair) are not used in the circuit!  AG tried to be helpful and figure out how they could be connected, thats why its on his schematic.  Hope you can get good noise out of it!

Can you post your voltages, please (I used BC549C with hFE around 700)?

My mainly problems are:

1. it isn't quiet (between passages I heard a lot of strange noises)
2. it sounds gated (from the original's soundclips it seems that's the sound of it)
3. the external gain pot that i used (not a trimpot) acts with gapes, which is very annoying.


Thx a lot!

[Celadine]

Are they in there just as a red herring for reverse engineers, or...? That's funny, if so.

No goop on the circuit, so it could be anything.  Possibly to tune each pedal?

@gigimarga - sorry, it left the breadboard months ago.  I can only recommend basic troubleshooting, especially the transistor orientation.   

[Taylor]

Anyway, can we start to work on it?

This is a little bit much, don't you think? Rolling your eyes at people because they aren't working hard enough to help you build a copy of someone else's work? I think people here are very generous with their time and knowledge. They don't owe you anything, they're just being nice, so try to be a little more laid-back about it.

[gigimarga]

@Celadine: Thx for your answer. My voltages seems strange to me (very low on the emitter to V+...only on first stage I got 4.5V with the gain pot maximized), so that's why I ask you. Yours sounded OK? Did you had problems like mine?

@Taylor (or @anyone that I offensed by mistake): I wanted to make only a joke, but my poor English leaded me to an idiot joke. I have serious problems with the expressions in English (by example, I didn't understood your "laid-back"...I think that's something like "walk on your belly in the front of someone" in Romanian which means to be gratefully humble to that person), so that was the source of my stupidity. I appreciate very much the time and the patience of a lot of people from this forum to share their knowledges with others unknown people and I will be eternally gratefully to them for that. In any case I don't think that they owe something to me, but I think that I owe a lot to them. Maybe sometime I will have enough knowledges in stompboxology to can to help others, too, as they did with me. So, my apologies again to all.

[Taylor]

No problem, these misunderstandings happen often when people from different backgrounds get together, whose first language is not always English. It's very cool to have people from all over the world on here!

"Laid-back" means calm and relaxed - I just meant that people will help you if you just relax and wait a little while.