ROG's Whisker Biscuit owns ALL Muffs, BUT...

[nordine]

Hey guys, here, the Biscuit, the famous simpler-than-muff, but better/easier-than-muff (you know, opinions)

here the circuit:


you can easily see its topology: a muff with its clipping stages replaced by a darlington bazz fuss

now, it has everything, good tone, gobs of gain, good tonestack
BUT,
MY problem with it: its too nice

too symetrical, too nice, too smooth, like TOO MUCH cream for me

Any ideas on how to turn it into a nastier creature? ..i want it to have more artifacts, more saturation, more breakup

tried:
fiddling with 10k bias resistors: didn't do anything
different diodes: it changes things, LEDS are more abrasive, but still smooth
last transistor base to ground resistor (100k): lowering its value gave me some of the tone i want, but it also makes the fuzz feeble


ANY IDEAS GUYS?

[petemoore]

   Pinch the collector[s with big R bias value[s.
  Drop the power supply voltag for another pinch option.
   Boost stage  in front ?

[Earthscum]

   Pinch the collector[s with big R bias value[s.
  Drop the power supply voltag for another pinch option.
   Boost stage  in front ?

Hell yeah! Voltage sag that thing! Put a 10k-20k pot between V+ and where V+ should go. It'll get real mean, real quick.

You could also try the voltage sag trick with 2 stages. This will cause the 2 stages to start to feed back to each other, making some new extra tones. I have found this to be a neat trick with emitters, as well... especially with the 2 clipping stages of a full muff. You may try something like that. If I had it breadboarded I'd try tying the 2 and 3 stages together with the voltage sag pot, and I'd tie the emitters of stage 1 and 2 together (pull Q2's emitter from ground to the junction of Q1's emitter and Re). Probably not gonna do anything neat, but who knows... sometimes it does. Just ideas for ya.

Definitely try the sag trick, though. 

[nordine]

voltage sag makes the fuzz duller  

what did the trick was removing completely the tone control section, so only a 100n cap is between Q2 and Q3
but, without a tone section, the sound is lame

could i swap those stages, leaving the tone control at the end? seeing that it has gain to give away (1:1 with uneffected signal is the volume control slightly above no-volume)

[mrslunk]

add another bazz fuss stage

i had sucess with something like the following:
instead of joining q2c to the tonestack,
connect q2c to a 470n cap, and the other end of that cap to the base and diode of another bazzfuss stage.
I also put a 470n cap from here to ground, as i found it tamed it just enough
then take your tonestack from the collector of that stage instead.

you might find you need a gain knob now

[Ben N]

Give it a standard Big Muff Sustain control, but with a fixed resistor to ground so it doesn't shut all the way down (Maybe 50k + 50k?). A standard Bazz Fuss is plenty weird/artifacty. It's that boost in front that makes it smoooove 'n' sustainy. Turn down the boost, and you should gradually roll it back from a WB into a BF.