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FUZZ FACE HELP?

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6/9/1997 6:44 PM

FUZZ FACE HELP?

I put together a + ground Fuzz Face the other night(DMZ Schematic)with germanium PNP's (NTE158). I played it through a clean 7-watt amp using a Les Paul with a Dimarzio Super Distortion. I was shocked...the lead sound was fantastic! Chords however,that's another story. They sounded terrible.
Is that expected with this type of circuit? If so, what would be recommended for a great sounding distortion unit, into a clean amp, for chords?
Also about the polarity issue... does the NPN version, if built as instructed on DMZ & GEO, sound similar to the PNP version? I'd hate to lose the sound just to change the polarity.

6/10/1997 6:38 AM

The Fuzz Face has no filtering after distortion so if you play chords through it into a clean amp it’s going to sound pretty harsh. (The harmonics of all those notes interacting). The Fuzz Face probably sounds best through a cranked tube amp where the output stage and speaker can do some filtering for you. You can be pretty sure Jimi had his Marshall cranked ! If you can’t do that try using just "power" chords (root fifth octave), keep the drive fairly low and reduce the treble on guitar and amp.

The Marshall Drive Master doesn’t sound too bad with chords if you keep the drive low. It has bass middle and treble controls so you can adjust these to reduce the fizz when playing through a clean amp. It doesn’t cut the bass like a Tube Screamer.

6/10/1997 7:05 AM

Yep, the unvarnished Fuzz Face is great for leads, less great for chords because of the intermodulation Dave mentions. Try turning the guitar volume back a touch for chords, the fuzz cleans up to a nice blues distortion, and you can then kick the volume back up for leads.

The NPN one sounds the same IF:
- you use germanium NPN's (harder to find than even PNP germaniums);
you can make silicon fuzz faces sound acceptable if you're willing to select through a lot of transistors, but they don't reach the same sound as good germaniums

- you get the right gains.
You want the FF transistors to be roughly a gain of 100, plus/minus 20 or so as read by the gain setting of a DMM. Germanium devices have huge gain variations from device to device - one reason we use silicon mostly today - and you'll find that devices from the same type number may very 2:1 or more in gain. The AC128's I get have measured gains from 16 to over 200, so I wind up throwing out about 1/3 to 1/2 of each shipment. There is a slightly different sound between matched gains on both transistors, and unmatched, one higher than the other, as well as whether the higher gain is in the first position or the second one.

With so few components, every part in the Fuzz Face makes a difference in tone.

6/10/1997 7:24 AM

I also built a fuzz face using miltary 2N404 PNP
germaniums. By backing off the drive a bit, I was
able to get a Neil Young "Crazy Horse" type
rhythm sound. It absolutely nailed the Cinnamon
Girl tonality.

Cranking up the drive brought back the sustainy
buzz tone that was the hallmark of many a 60's
rock group. "American Woman" and "No Time"
lead tones from The Guess Who come to mind.

I use the pedal weekly to cover (I Can't Get No)
Satisfaction on stage.

Mark Amundson,

7/8/1997 2:37 PM
Jack Orman	I agree that with so few parts the individual components make a lot of difference. Each copy that you build will have a slightly different sound... some good some bad. You can use transistor sockets and plug in a few different ones to see how the sound changes.

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