| ampage Tube Amps / Music Electronics |
For current discussions, please visit Music Electronics Forum. |
ampage archive
Vintage threads from the first ten years
Fuzz Face weak/crackly
:
 6/19/2000 9:28 AM |
|
Tim |
Fuzz Face weak/crackly Hello every1. I posted on here a while ago about a fuzzface pedal I had that was weak sounding. Advice I received was to change the caps. I have had somebody do this for me now. It has improved the sound slightly - it sounds clearer. The sustain is much nicer. The pedal still lacks power compared to a Big Muff and it sounds murky & flat unless I run that Boss pedal into it. The Boss (which sounds shit on it's own) seems to liven the Fuzzface up nicely with a screamier sound. If I connect the Fuzzface after the boss and leave the boss turned off I still get a sound which goes completely flat after 1 second of playing chords. Maybe there is nothing wrong with my pedal now & this is what they are supposed to be like? I read in numerous places where people said they have to use their fuzzface in combination with amp distortion to get what they wanted. -- See! Cute Fluffy Bunny Rabbits! http://www.semilanceata.freeserve.co.uk Tim |
|---|---|
| 6/19/2000 12:12 PM |
||
| R.G. |
You have a biasing problem. Something is letting a capacitor charge up over a period of about a second to the place where it is "flat". There is either a connection open/wrong, or a bad part. Suspect the two biggest caps and the circuits around them - the 2.2uF input cap and the 22uF cap on the 1K distortion control. I'd bet that the 1K's connection to ground is open or high resistance, but that's just a guess. | |
|---|---|---|
| 6/19/2000 1:57 PM |
|
| Pauley |
The easiest way to make your FF sound right is to break out the multimeter and measure the voltage on the collector of Q2, the second transistor. Put the black lead to ground and the red lead to the collector. The sign of the number doesn't matter but you want it to be around 4.5v. It probably is higher than that, so you need to increase the value of the 8.2k resistor connected to Q2's collector. The easiest way is to put a 100k trim pot in there in place of the 8.2k and just dial in the correct voltage while watching your DMM. Mine did the splatty, noise-gate thing at first then I realized I used a 5k pot instead of a 1k pot for the drive and that was throwing off the biasing of the circuit. I adjusted it and now it screams just like my Big Muff. |
|---|---|
| 6/19/2000 6:34 PM |
|
| Rob |
I built a fuzzface without having checked the gain of the transistors first and it sounds great. I guess I got lucky, but what convinced me was the various FF sound bytes on Aron's Stompbox page, Tonefrenzy, and others. I believe on Aron's site he goes direct to record (no amp), and it still sounds incredible, so I'd have to say that it is not necessary to have a cranked amp to get it to sound good, but it may sound better to you. |
|---|---|
| 6/19/2000 8:30 PM |
|
| Stuart |
Did you find out what the extra .047 cap was doing in there? |
|---|---|
| 6/20/2000 9:02 AM |
|
| Tim |
Hello all. Thanks for your continued interest in my lovely pedal. I cant believe the capacitors are faulty: as I have had all of them replaced and it still sounds much the same. Perhaps something in my Boss pedal is causing the loss of power after 1 second: as I said it only happens when that pedal is connected but switched off. I think it might be causing similar probs with my Big Muff too, but not sure about that - need to try it again. I dont have a multimeter or anything like that. All I could do is take it back to my fixer dude. He is of the opinion that there's no point changing resistors to different sizes if all u want is to get the original fuzzface sound. If I take it back to him he'll probly just change the Transistors and/or replace the resistors with identical ones. The extra cap: according to David Morin (can't remember his address but he had a v cool Fuzzface page) all late 80s Crest Audio fuzzfaces were wired up as mine is. I do not have a circuit diagram for this though. -- See! Cute Fluffy Bunny Rabbits! http://www.semilanceata.freeserve.co.uk Tim |
|---|---|
| Page 1 of 1 |