Why's my fuzz so blatty?

[theundeadelvis]

Howdy folks! I finished up building Dragonfly's Smooth Silicon fuzz and it's definitely not right. Sounds super blatty and gated. Have to strum hard to get sound, then it cuts out when the signal dies down a bit. I tried a couple 2N5088's and a couple 2N3904's (not sure of HFE). I adjusted the trimmer while playing, and it didn't make much of a difference. Any suggestions? Thanks in advance!

[R.G.]

Read and follow the sticky topic "Debugging: what to do when it doesn't work".

As a side note, "blatty" is always a misbiasing. Your description is a classic.

[LucifersTrip]

Howdy folks! I finished up building Dragonfly's Smooth Silicon fuzz and it's definitely not right. Sounds super blatty and gated. Have to strum hard to get sound, then it cuts out when the signal dies down a bit. I tried a couple 2N5088's and a couple 2N3904's (not sure of HFE). I adjusted the trimmer while playing, and it didn't make much of a difference. Any suggestions? Thanks in advance!

Adjust trimmer to get Q2C voltage to ~4.5 . If you can't get 4.5, then you chose the wrong transistors, have a bad component, wired it wrong or have a bad solder joint...and then follow R.G.'s advice above, ie:

[theundeadelvis]

Sorry! I'm usually a little better about posting my voltages, but I jumped the gun here.
Q1
C=1.28
B=.65
E=0

Q2
C=9.4
B=1.28
E=.78

The collector of Q2 only swings from 9.3 to 9.4 using the trimmer, so I'll focus my attention around that for the time being. Thanks for your help guys!

[theundeadelvis]

Figured it out! I wired the Fuzz pot's ground. Sounds awesome!