Post by mward on Nov 7, 2006 20:44:41 GMT -7
After seeing the price of a neoretro fuzz pedal I pretty much decided I would build my own. The original schematic along with a bazillion variations are on the net and it's not a difficult circuit. I got a freezer bag full of AC128 germanium transistors out of which I found 2 okay ones and about 15 passable. The rest were junk. Actually I am pretty sure it was cherry picked through before I got to it as there were no really high gain transistors in there but I found a few that have enough gain to make some decent fuzz. Really high gain fuzz wouldn't be my style anyhow. I'm not a fuzz person most of the time.
I got the rest of my stuff from mouser last night and stuck it in a bread board according to the diagram. No go.
I soldered it all together like a birds nest, no go again.
I breadboarded one with 2n5089 transistors and it didn't work either.
At this point I needed sleep and food, having forgotten about both trying to build one of these. I got up in the morning and noticed I had 1 wire out of place. Got it in the right place and voila, fuzz. ;D It actually sounded pretty good for silicon transistors. A little more metal, a little less hendrix. So I reversed the polarity of the board and replaced the 5089s with AC128s and voila, hendrix lives. Well, if hendrix was a not very good guitarist and lived in my house. ;D
Tonight I got it all soldered up nice and inside an enclosure. I am still waiting on a proper switch so I can set it to non tone sucking when in bypass mode, but it's pretty cool to build your own effects and sounds really nice, very musical in the fuzz. Chords retain distinction rather than mudding out.
I've got 2 glass Mullard OC44s in the mail. Next project is a Dallas Rangemaster. ;D ;D
I got the rest of my stuff from mouser last night and stuck it in a bread board according to the diagram. No go.
I soldered it all together like a birds nest, no go again.
I breadboarded one with 2n5089 transistors and it didn't work either.
At this point I needed sleep and food, having forgotten about both trying to build one of these. I got up in the morning and noticed I had 1 wire out of place. Got it in the right place and voila, fuzz. ;D It actually sounded pretty good for silicon transistors. A little more metal, a little less hendrix. So I reversed the polarity of the board and replaced the 5089s with AC128s and voila, hendrix lives. Well, if hendrix was a not very good guitarist and lived in my house. ;D
Tonight I got it all soldered up nice and inside an enclosure. I am still waiting on a proper switch so I can set it to non tone sucking when in bypass mode, but it's pretty cool to build your own effects and sounds really nice, very musical in the fuzz. Chords retain distinction rather than mudding out.
I've got 2 glass Mullard OC44s in the mail. Next project is a Dallas Rangemaster. ;D ;D