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dull sounding fuzz face

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10/6/1999 2:52 AM

dull sounding fuzz face

So last night I used a couple of terminal strips to prototype my fuzz face. I used the old arbiter schem with nte 158 pnp transistors. right now power is from a 9v wall wart. The fuzz is resposive to touch and sounds nice as compared to the silicon fuzz I had built but the new one is muddy sounding. Regardless of pickup selection or control throw. It is just muddy. The high end is all gone.

Does anyone have any suggestions as to where the high end is going??????

Thanks

10/6/1999 7:50 AM
R.G.	It's going into the transistors. Try replacing the second transistor with a silicon PNP (2N3906 or if you're adventurous, 2N4250) and then pick the best of your NTE's for the first stage. NTE158 is reported to be a real mixed bag for FF's. Some good, many mediocre, some bad.

10/8/1999 1:48 PM

Tacking on some possible FF mods

Some possibilities:

-10uF in place of 20uF--less bottomy sounding
-.1uF mylar bypass on the 20uF--very subtle change-more noticeable on single notes and w/the gtr. pot turned down
-68uF tantalum (probably best to experiment w/this value) bypass in addition to 10uF--the tantalum's sonics adds interesting flavour to the distortion
-higher value for the 0.01uF output coupling cap for less saturation(0.047uF, for example)

Nothing major, but hopefully the above will be of some use to Fuzz Face-tweakers.

Dai Hirokawa

10/20/1999 10:54 AM

Howdy, FFaceHeads, been messing around w/lower gain Ge Trs and wanted to share an observation on the "10uf instead of 20uF" mod.
10uF for low gain Ge Trs like AC128 seems too low. 20uF or higher seems to work better w/the lower gain Ge Trs.
10uF seems better w/high gain Ge Trs and Si Trs. Also I'm not absolutely sure about this but recently I noticed that my Si FF copy wasn't sounding as good as I remembered, so I checked the battery voltage and it read low(about 7 volts). Has anybody else experienced such a phenomenon of Si FFs sounding worse as the voltage drops(is this backwards from the perspective of some people liking their Ge FFs w/weaker voltage)? (Not sure about this also,) but the clean tone w/the gtr. pot turned down a little seemed worse also. I kinda wondered if these were some sort of audio hallucinations or what.

>I've subbed a couple of transistors and one of the 158's was crappy. The silicon were soso. Still kinda dull.

Also, on the above, have you made sure the connection of the 20uF is as it should be? I've hooked it up wrong in the past and seem to recall that this made it very dull and weak sounding. Also, maybe it is hooked up correctly but you just don't like the sound of the specific Trs you are using. If you want a more exaggerated fuzz effect, I would suggest that you check out some higher gain Ge Trs.

Dai Hirokawa

Dai Hirokawa

10/11/1999 5:39 PM

Re: dull sounding fuzz face

Hi, Ben. Are you using humbuckers? I have found that the lowish input impedance of the FF can cut the highs on a humbucker a bit. You might try the 50K pot in series with the input cap, this may help with humbuckers.

I built a FF awhile back with a FET input buffer. Big change! Lots of highs with a humbucker, but it didn't sound like a FF anymore. I plan to have a buffer in my next one, switchable with a toggle switch.

10/11/1999 6:09 PM
Gus	MKB try my simple mod you can get the buffering and tune the high end roll check Aron's site GCS 3 transistor fuzz.

10/12/1999 9:06 AM
Tobias Karlsson	Mr MKB wrote; "You might try the 50K pot in series with the input cap, this may help with humbuckers." Isn't that almost the same as turning the volume knob on the guitar down a little bit? Assuming it's a 500k pot that would be 50k in series and 450 to ground, almost the same as 50k in series and 500k to ground? Tobias Karlsson in Sweden

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