my humble contribution to the world, YAFF, "the liberal komrade"

[pinkjimiphoton]

basically a dunlop jh2, but pnp and with ge transistors. works really well, much more big-muffish than fuzz faceish imho....

here's a video demo on youtube with the colorsound vocalizer me and dino cloned:

[EATyourGuitar]

I might redraw this as a schematic so I can look at it. I have some MN16b that are all between Hfe 40 and 100. I wonder how different they are from the MP16b. they are both russian PNP germanium. my MN16b have way to much bass and generally too muddy in a fuzz face. I pulled Q2 out and put some random japanese germanium pnp Hfe85. sounded way better. its hard to add a high pass filter on a fuzz face without screwing up the sound. or maybe I just dont know what I am doing.

[DDD]

There are NO Russian "MN16b" transistors at all.
None of the Russian (Soviet) trannies have the "MN" prefix.

[LucifersTrip]

There are NO Russian "MN16b" transistors at all.
None of the Russian (Soviet) trannies have the "MN" prefix.

he wrote MP16b once and prob wrote MN16b accidentally twice

[pinkjimiphoton]

the batch i got i got on evil bay, i got 50 of 'em for 11 bux shipped. i went thru all of them, and the Hfe was between 74 and i think 135 at the highest...average was around 100 or so.

they DO have plenty of ass, which may be why the fuzz has so much cream to it. to me, it sounds more like a muff than a face. but it cleans up great with the guitar volume.

like i said, it's basically a dunlop jh2 fuzz with the polarity reversed to a positive ground circuit, mp16b ge's instead of the mpsa18's that were supposed to be there, and a GE diode clipper at the end. no real need to draw up a schematic, just use the one R.G. drew up at geo and ya should be good to go.

i socketed the transistors caps and zener, so i could convert between pnp and npn...out of the various combinations i tried of silicon and ge npn's and pnp's,  to my ear this was the best sounding combination.

thanks for checking it out, if ya build it, let me know please!

peace
jimi

[LucifersTrip]

There are NO Russian "MN16b" transistors at all.
None of the Russian (Soviet) trannies have the "MN" prefix.

he wrote MP16b once and prob wrote MN16b accidentally twice

I meant:
he wrote MP16b once and prob wrote MN16n accidentally twice

it's great the average was around 100. many of the Russian ones are on the lower side of the listed gains

Your fuzz does have a cool, rich sound. Did you actually ever use it with the amp on a totally clean setting?

[pinkjimiphoton]

yah, i've used it with my fenders, and with my marshall, and it sounds nice and fat and punchy dirty or clean. i'm kinda impressed by it, i like it almost as much as my fuzz face, and am considering replacing my big muff with it as it sounds similar to the way i set the muff.

i never play super clean generally, if i do it's most likely thru a fuzz with the guitar turned down. the video was mostly all about the vocalizer, so i didn't dick around with the lk fuzz too much...that was just both knobs pegged into a totally digital behringer amp set like a cranked up fender.

i believe the actual Hfe of the two transistors was around 113 or so...i just kept plugging 'em in until i liked the sound, but the first transistor was one of a pair i had matched for gain. the other was just random, twisted the trimmer til it sounded good to me. no idea what the actual gain was.

if ya want, over the weekend when i get a chance, i can do a lk fuzz only demo to show off the sounds. it's really responsive to guitar volume/dynamics like a good ff should be, but to me, doesn't sound like one...maybe i shoulda called it the big muff face...err...glazed donut? lol..

[Ronan]

Hi jimi, I finally ordered some MP16B and 1N34 to give this a go! Breadboard first, as usual.

I was checking out the vero layout, there seems to be a couple minor problems. The blue wire from P11 goes to row i but doesn't actually connect to anything. The strip between f9and f10 needs to be cut, and the ends of R4 and C4 don't seem to be connected to Q2's emitter (f10).

Great clip, keep up the good work! After hearing your wah, I got inspired to have a go at modding my colorsound clone with an ehx bassballs type circuit. I'll let you know how it goes. Early results are very encouraging. Hey, here's a schem, to go with the layout... 

[pinkjimiphoton]

ooops. my bad!! sorry!! that should connect to G 17...2 rows up....then the blue wire connects to the 68k/47pf cathode of the 2nd transistor. will fix that and the rest later bro...sorry!!

[EATyourGuitar]

thanks for the schematic! I have all the parts and I'm ready for the breadboard

[pinkjimiphoton]

don't eat it yet, eatyourguitar, let me fix it first!! lol

[EATyourGuitar]

Ok, ill wait. I was gonna build it without the power filtering and polarity protection. I dont really need the zener do I?

[pinkjimiphoton]

here ya go, the corrected layout...thanks so much to ronan not only for catching the couple bugs in the original, but also for making a schematic of it for folks~





beware tho, that if you use mpsa18's, you need to reverse all the electro caps, battery, and the zener diode!

if you want, make it like i did, socket the transistors, caps and zener so you can add pretty much any transistor you want, either pnp or npn.

have fun, and again, thanks to ronan~

[pinkjimiphoton]

Ok, ill wait. I was gonna build it without the power filtering and polarity protection. I dont really need the zener do I?

if ya wanna run it from a wart, i'd add the cap and zener, but if you're gonna just run it with a battery you should be fine, bro.

let me know how it comes out!

[Ronan]

Hi jimi, me again, come to annoy you again    There's just one more little bug in there. There needs to be a spot where Q2's emitter joins up with R4, C4, C6 and the top of the 1K pot. At the moment the Q2 emitter is only hooking up with C6. So I took the liberty, hope ya don't mind, of modifying the layout with MS Paint, since a pic is worth a thousand words. I also moved Q2, R5 and C5 across to the right one space so there's room for a standard trace cut at f10.  I might have to order some MPSA18's too, one can never have enough trannies and spare parts lying around.  

[pinkjimiphoton]

awesome brother, thanks. looks good!

[EATyourGuitar]

bump. I'm going to build one of these today but I have some questions.

1) why is R1 in series to the power supply when on a FF it is in series with your VR1? it probably makes no difference but I was wondering if you had a reason for doing that or is it random?

2) R2 100R seems like it serves no purpose with the minimum impedance of C1 at audio rates being a lot more than 100R. without R2 it should be fine. or is there a real reason for that 100R?

3) can I remove C2 to make the pedal a little brighter? was C2 part of a RC filter with R2?

thanks Mr Photon!

[pinkjimiphoton]

if i remember, r1 is in series to help reduce hash and noise... the mp16b's can be a bit hissy with a lot of background crackle. this was an early attempt at making that stuff stop.

c2 and r1 were there for pretty much the same reason, to bleed some of the noise off to ground. can probably be eliminated, or you can always socket and experiment if ya wanted to.
bleeds off a little of the high frequency noise to ground i think.
back then, i used to try and just adapt other designs, so it could be completely superfluous.
i don't even own the pedal any more, so you guess is as good as mine.

i'd suggest building it and leaving out those two resistors and c2, and see how it sounds. or maybe leave out r1 and c2 and try it. they can be added back in if ya think it's necessary i guess.

sorry i'm not more help!

[EATyourGuitar]

470R in series with power to reduce noise is something we do in synth modules. lots of people that were using ferrite beads switched to 47R resistors instead. I will leave it in. R2 and C2 low pass filter can be moved to before the input cap where R2 actually does something. I will try something like 1k and 560pf. another option would be to put a VR 100k before C1 to go with that 560pf C2. I have had good results in the past on a FF with an input VR but this time it serves double duty as a real 8khz low pass when you get closer to 100k + 560pf.

thanks again, I will post my results when I'm done.

[joegagan]

luv ya , jimmy, but would never build or use a pedal with this name.