Fuzz Face Thoughts...

Big Monk

Big Monk

Well-known member
As some of you know, I’m a MK II Tonebender guy to the bone, but also love Silicon Fuzz Faces. Part of the reason I developed the universal board was to build my own personal fuzzes from my stash of transistors without having to have multiple boards lying around.

So I built the MK II first, then the Silicon Fuzz Face.

Germanium Fuzz Face is on the breadboard now. At first, I thought something was amiss. It had much lower output than expected. Made sure all my connections were sound and bumped up Rc3a from 470 ohm to 1.2k, with the idea that it would help give me more oomph. Nothing.

I think I learned the hard way that doing fuzzes in reverse order by gain has left me feeling a bit deflated on the Germanium Fuzz Face. I think I need to adjust my expectations (and amp settings) to compensate!
 
When I feel like that and virtually getting nowhere I tend to put the breadboard down for the evening. By the time I get to bed I get my Eureka moment with an answer and try it the next morning if I have time.
 
BuddytheReow said:
When I feel like that and virtually getting nowhere I tend to put the breadboard down for the evening. By the time I get to bed I get my Eureka moment with an answer and try it the next morning if I have time.
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I thinks it’s simply that the germanium fuzz face is lower gain and I need to turn the amp up a bit more to compensate. Coming off a high gain silicon version, it was just a shocker.
 
Big Monk said:
Since I’ve been testing and finalizing the MK II and Silicon Fuzz Face, I’ve had the drive down. I think I need to increase the drive and the Level on the Germanium Fuzz Face to compensate for the lower gain.
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Yeah that's how I'd do it. I really don't like my germanium fuzz face circuits into a clean amp but I also like to get some cleanup on my guitar volume knob. I've seen you playing a les paul in your other videos, but I highly prefer a GE fuzz face with a tele or better yet a strat. Tone benders seem to work better with humbuckers for me
 
Harry Klippton said:
Yeah that's how I'd do it. I really don't like my germanium fuzz face circuits into a clean amp but I also like to get some cleanup on my guitar volume knob. I've seen you playing a les paul in your other videos, but I highly prefer a GE fuzz face with a tele or better yet a strat. Tone benders seem to work better with humbuckers for me
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My Wolfetones in the LP are set physically pretty low and my Probuckers in my strat are even lower.

Don’t get me wrong, it sounds great but I think I had a “gain haze” over my ears from the Bender and Si FF. Now that I know I’m not crazy, I’ll proceed with the tuning.
 
The Ge FF isn’t really that intense of a fuzz…unless you run it into a few cranked 100w Marshalls. They need a boost. I like how they sound into a clean amp: warm, far, wooly, with a bit of buzz. A very round tone.
 
Built a GE FF several years ago that i didn’t like, took it to the owner of a good local shop that dealt in only vintage stuff. He plugged it in with a strat and just couldn’t stopped playing. Said it was a really good one. That is how I learned that I don’t like GE FF.

Might be that it’s just not for you.
 
My experience with Fuzz Faces is with Dunlops (JHW1, JDF2 and JFH1) and the PedalPCB Sunflower (with AC125s).

Ge FFs seem to have the same output volume as Si FFs but they have a little less gain, which results in less harsh tones.

However I never keep the Fuzz knob maxed out because no FF will clean up completely otherwise.

There's a clear spot around 85-90% where the gain goes down a notch. That's the sweet spot. Less noise, less harshness and with my Strat at 7 the tone is completely clean. I have no treble bleed so I need the extra brightness of Silicon.

The Volume knob can be turned up for more high end (those SRV "glassy cleans" people rave about) l but it reintroduces background hiss.

Germaniums are also often noisy. My Sunflower uses AC125s and they hiss on cleanup.
My Dunlop JDF2 has different transistors and is much quieter.

My go to is the Silicon JHF1 but I'm going to try and build a clone on stripboard so I can put it in a standard enclosure with an LED.
I have a few BC108s ranging from 110 to 330 hFe. Will see what works best.
 
andare said:
My experience with Fuzz Faces is with Dunlops (JHW1, JDF2 and JFH1) and the PedalPCB Sunflower (with AC125s).

Ge FFs seem to have the same output volume as Si FFs but they have a little less gain, which results in less harsh tones.

However I never keep the Fuzz knob maxed out because no FF will clean up completely otherwise.

There's a clear spot around 85-90% where the gain goes down a notch. That's the sweet spot. Less noise, less harshness and with my Strat at 7 the tone is completely clean. I have no treble bleed so I need the extra brightness of Silicon.

The Volume knob can be turned up for more high end (those SRV "glassy cleans" people rave about) l but it reintroduces background hiss.

Germaniums are also often noisy. My Sunflower uses AC125s and they hiss on cleanup.
My Dunlop JDF2 has different transistors and is much quieter.

My go to is the Silicon JHF1 but I'm going to try and build a clone on stripboard so I can put it in a standard enclosure with an LED.
I have a few BC108s ranging from 110 to 330 hFe. Will see what works best.
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I ended up using a BC109B for Q1 at 286 hFE and an Amperex A104 for Q2 at 405 hFE. I initially tested a lower gain Q1/Q2 combo using Amperex A115/A104 (120/285 hFE) and it just did not have that “sizzle” and girth with the guitar volume up. Going higher gain meant I still had the lower gain tones but simply farther down the guitar volume. Cleans up incredibly well at 6 or so on the dial.

As to the Germanium version, I still need to clean up the breadboard wiring and confirm that my connections are sound. I’m due for a new board anyway, as some of rows are getting touchy.

To your noise issue, I typically use base to collector caps on all the Germanium units I build and then tweak the input, emitter, and output caps as needed to regain back any high end lost. Works very well. My Tonebender MK II is basically silent, which is no small feat for that noisy ass circuit.

I’ll keep messing with this Ge FF and see what I can do. It might just need some more output by tweaking the traditional 470/8.2k Rc3 string.
 
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@Big Monk here's a crummy phone clip of my sunface NKT red dot. Any time I've breadboarded a ge fuzz face to the original arbiter schematic, it sounds very close to this too. I looked all over on my phone for clips of the last time I breadboarded one but couldn't find them so you get this instead.

The amp isn't very loud cuz my baby is on the floor behind me. The pedal settings are both volume and fuzz just about 3 o'clock. Tele middle position. And you can't see my feet but they're bare and dirty from being outside, as is customary here in the hills.

Bonus points to anyone who can name the song I couldn't really remember how to pay while recording this

 
One thing I find interesting is the 4.5 vDC bias point for Q2.

I always start with the bog standard Arbiter schematic and have literally NEVER gotten anywhere near that without swapping collector resistors.

The only time it’s ever close is with leakier transistors and even then, nowhere below 5 vDC.

With that said, I’ve got mine sounding much better on the breadboard. Now that biasing is done, I’ll move to house reduction and then frequency response.
 
Big Monk said:
I ended up using a BC109B for Q1 at 286 hFE and an Amperex A104 for Q2 at 405 hFE. I initially tested a lower gain Q1/Q2 combo using Amperex A115/A104 (120/285 hFE) and it just did not have that “sizzle” and girth with the guitar volume up. Going higher gain meant I still had the lower gain tones but simply farther down the guitar volume. Cleans up incredibly well at 6 or so on the dial.

As to the Germanium version, I still need to clean up the breadboard wiring and confirm that my connections are sound. I’m due for a new board anyway, as some of rows are getting touchy.

To your noise issue, I typically use base to collector caps on all the gear,annum units I build and them tweak the input, emitter, and output caps as needed to regain back any high need lost. Works very well. My Tonebender MK II is basically silent, which is no small feat for that noisy ass circuit.

I’ll keep messing with this Ge FF and see what I can do. It might just need some more output by tweaking the traditional 470/8.2k Rc3 string.
Click to expand...
All those mods are beyond my pay grade but I'll save this comment for when i can understand it
 
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