fuzz - not loud enough

Started by rtill, March 22, 2010, 09:26:55 PM

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rtill

Hello,
built another npn silicon fuzz face - the volume of the pedal is way lower than that of the amp.  I 've tried switching the 500k vol. pot with a 1M and it made some difference, however not enough.  Also tried a boost/jfet mini circuit much like the fetzer after it and it totally changed the tone of the pedal which I don't want (sounds more heavy metal like with the fetzer boost), but it gave it the volume boost needed.  Any ideas on what I can do after taking the fetzer boost out?

trjones1

Try increasing the resistor from +9V to the output pot.  You may have to adjust the resistor going to the collector of the 2nd transistor to maintain proper bias. 

Scruffie

Quote from: trjones1 on March 22, 2010, 09:50:17 PM
Try increasing the resistor from +9V to the output pot.  You may have to adjust the resistor going to the collector of the 2nd transistor to maintain proper bias. 
Yup, I just built a silicon fuzz face days ago and I ended up with 470R instead of the schematics 390R & a 10k and 4.7k in parallel to get me 3.2k instead of 8.2k and that gave me a Collector bias of 5V and unity gain at around 2/3 O'Clock with a 390R unity was at 7 O'Clock

John Lyons

Yep. The closer yo take the output fron the collector the louder the output.
You want to keep the same resistance between the collector and +9v
so make the resistor straight to +9v bigger as mentioned above, and make the
resistor to the collector smaller to raise the output. Take the output off the junction
of the two resistors. 1K/8K2 ish would well but you should fool with getting the
collector to bias to 5v ish so fool with the collector resistor.

Before you start taking things apart...
what voltage are you getting on the Collector
of Q2?
Basic Audio Pedals
www.basicaudio.net/

philbinator1

I too built a fuzz face days ago, was having volume issues too, got good advice to change R1 from 330R to 1K and it worked great!  could probably even go higher.
"Hows are we's?  We's in the f*cking middle of a dinners meal!  Dats hows we am!" - Skwisgaar Skwigelf

rtill

Quote from: John Lyons on March 23, 2010, 01:55:34 AM
Yep. The closer yo take the output fron the collector the louder the output.
You want to keep the same resistance between the collector and +9v
so make the resistor straight to +9v bigger as mentioned above, and make the
resistor to the collector smaller to raise the output. Take the output off the junction
of the two resistors. 1K/8K2 ish would well but you should fool with getting the
collector to bias to 5v ish so fool with the collector resistor.

Before you start taking things apart...
what voltage are you getting on the Collector
of Q2?


Good advice! I'll have to play around.....sorry I don't have a multimeter on hand to test.