What a difference a transistor makes

[Exactopposite]

SO i built a fuzz face about a year and a half ago. I never really loved it. I increased the value of the 330 ohm resistor with a 1k2 to get more volume out of it, tried some different caps and transistors, but it just never did it for me. I eventually put it back with the stock values for everything except the 330 ohm  resistor and the trimmer pot to adjust the bias. It always sounded to bassy and woofy. I bought a fuzz from someone here on the for sale board that I liked a lot better so I pretty much gave up on the fuzz face. It didn't have that flabby overly bassy sound that the fuzz face had. There was plenty of gain, but it was much more clear and defined than my fuzz face. I also built an axis fuzz (not axis face) that I really like, so the fuzz face was doing nothing but collecting dust. I just decided maybe a fuzz face just wasn't the sound for me.

So anyway, yesterday I finally (after about a year) decided to take a good look at this mystery fuzz that I bought from the fellow forum member. I traced out the circuit and guess what. It's a fuzz face. The only thing different is that it has a 1k5 resistor in place of the 330 ohm, and it doesn't have a trim pot for the bias. I'm scratching my head like what the hell? How can it sound so different? Turns out it's the transistors. It has a BC107A and a 2N2222A (i forget which is q1 vs q2).  Somehow in a fit of idiocy, I had a BC108B as q2 in the fuzz face that I built. Q1 was 2n2222A. I have no idea why I did that because I know the gain is too high, but, at the same time, I didn't know it would have such an affect on the sound though.

So I swapped out the transistors in it. I put a 2n2369A in q1, 2n2222A in q2, adjusted the bias and BOOM! The difference is night and day. It sounds fantastic now. No more of that overly bassy, muddy, sloppy sound it had before (at least not with my strats). It even sounds better with my humbucker guitars now than it did with my strats before. I can't believe after all this time it was just as simple as that. I guess I underestimated how much the gain of the transistors played a role in the tonal aspects of this circuit.

I simply posted this in the hopes that someone else who builds their first fuzz may learn from it. I had never used a fuzz before I built the FF so I had nothing to compare it to. It sounds like a totally different pedal now.

[The Incident]

This same thing happened to me when I built my trotsky, couldn't get my hands on any decent germ trannies and popped a silicone nonsense I can't remember in there and it was awful, dull, no definition, you name it.  finally got around to the tranny that beavis recommends and the pedal comes to life, even with similar trannies it's an OK pedal, but when you get the right one, it's night and day,.

[ocg]

...i've build a silicon fuzz face with a pair of bc108, i hate it... .

[Exactopposite]

...i've build a silicon fuzz face with a pair of bc108, i hate it... .

might be time to try some different transistors

[Hanglow]

definitely try different ones - I tried one with BC108's and it sounded pretty awful,even after tweaking everything from the bias to output caps and adding cb caps etc  - far too much gain I think I ended up with 2n3053 and 2n2222a 's in that one.  Look for lower gain ones basically, BC183's are another good one as well as probably many others

[DougH]

Have you checked the hfe of any of the transistors you were experimenting with?

[Exactopposite]

Have you checked the hfe of any of the transistors you were experimenting with?

no, i need to get a meter that has that function. I keep forgetting to get one. Once I do i can measure the ones in both of these pedals because they are in sockets.

[Tonemonger]

The first thing I check in a new pedal is lower gain equivalents and probably 80% of the time I keep them.
If I find something I really love then I build 2 versions ( though I dont know why I have 9 Big Muffs !).

[Exactopposite]

The first thing I check in a new pedal is lower gain equivalents and probably 80% of the time I keep them.
If I find something I really love then I build 2 versions ( though I don't know why I have 9 Big Muffs !).

Makes sense.

Funny, the big muff (or at least my big muff) isn't really my cup of tea. I have one of the old one with the tone bypass switch. Every now and then I'll dust it off and plug it up, but it keeps ending up back in a box somewhere. I'll probably jsut end up selling it one day when it's worth more.

[Mugshot]

how about adding a 120ohm emitter resistor to ground in Q1, will it not help lower the gain of the first stage?