Psst i got a secret

Username123

Username123

Well-known member
Aion fx is releasing 6 new kits but the release has been delayed till December because of problems with enclosure sourcing. This includes both the Tonebender mark II and mark III the germanium fuzz face that has a pickup simulator and a few equalization knobs, a Dallas rangemaster, a zvex fuzz factory with some added knobs and a zvex wooly mammoth. Don't kill me Mr. Pedalpcb......
 
Yes, most of that is here except the modified fuzz face. By the way they are kits and not just pcbs. It might be nice to not have to hunt for germanium transistors that are in the right HFE spec for biasing. I bet they will be tested for leakage too.
 
benny_profane said:
Those kits will more than likely be released as Si versions. The logistics of Ge versions would be too difficult to make any sense (unless priced accordingly).
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they name the germanium version. There already is a silicon version for some of the circuits, so why would they call it the germanium circuit name specifically instead of the silicon circuit name?
 
Username123 said:
they name the germanium version. There already is a silicon version for some of the circuits, so why would they call it the germanium circuit name specifically instead of the silicon circuit name?
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In that case, I don’t know. To me, it seems like a lot-making and project support nightmare though. Sounds like you’ve got the inside scoop.

Edit: That sounded snarky. Didn’t mean to be. I have no idea how he’d pull that off at scale, though.
 
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The Aion guy seems to be pretty good at the supply stuff, since he found a way to have custom PRP style resistors in all of his kits.

I wouldn’t be surprised if he was able to source new production germanium like a few of the bigger pedal companies have.
 
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wintercept said:
The Aion guy seems to be pretty good at the supply stuff, since he found a way to have custom PRP style resistors in all of his kits.

I wouldn’t be surprised if he was able to source new production germanium like a few of the bigger pedal companies have.
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That's what I was thinking. He sources high quality and trusted brand's parts. He might be able to do it. Also the fuzz faces have an impedance booster circuit that utilizes a transformer that's out of stock all the time, but he would have to do an entirely new pcb layout if he excluded that.
 
benny_profane said:
In that case, I don’t know. To me, it seems like a lot-making and project support nightmare though. Sounds like you’ve got the inside scoop.

Edit: That sounded snarky. Didn’t mean to be. I have no idea how he’d pull that off at scale, though.
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I don't really think you are being snarky at all. I think you are just trying to reach logical conclusions, and I appreciate that. I could always ask him what he's doing for the germanium transistors. All I had to do was ask when the kits where coming out and he gave me a time and every single kit being released. I don't really have the inside scoop. I agree, I think it would be a nightmare for project support.
On the other hand like what wintercept said, he is pretty good at sourcing parts. He had those resistors with the values on them custom made and they have 0.5 tolerance which is pretty ridiculous. Not really necessary but he did it regardless just so it was higher quality. He also has all the fancy brands like wima caps, taiway switches, Texas instruments ICs, and central semiconductor semiconductors of course.
 
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I should elaborate, I used completely the wrong word when I said new production. What companies like NTE and New Jersey Semiconductor do is buy and sort raw stock germanium transistor to the specifications of various in demand parts.
 
Big Monk said:
Right, but none of the kits they’ve ever sold needed Germanium transistors. Guitar pedal PCB industry standard is to exclude germanium transistors in kits. It’s not cost effective for the kit sellers to source, sort and spec parts that are so difficult to come buy in large quantities.
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I bought a Sunflower kit from Musikding that included two AC125s in the correct range (as per the label, I couldn't test them). I think they do this for other kits too, like their version of the Rangemaster.
 
Username123 said:
germanium fuzz face that has a pickup simulator and a few equalization knobs
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There is a servo germanium fuzz face here that might make it to PCB at some point. I might be wrong but I think it is designed to not be susceptible to drift and temperature fluctuations. I wonder if a pickup simulator could be added to that design to deal with impedance? Then it would essentially have all the features of the Benson fuzz...
 
benny_profane said:
I’m not entirely sure what the situation is here, but these seem to be new production Ge devices. So this is a possible source. SBP has sold them before.

Semiconductors - Transistors, Germanium

Germanium, Transistors Semiconductor available from ntepartsdirect.com
www.ntepartsdirect.com www.ntepartsdirect.com
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YOWZA! Kinda pricey. I looked into the "new" AC127s that SBP was getting from New Jersey Semiconductor. They are old die newly packaged. I got a price quote from one of NJS's distributors that was about 1/2 of SBP's price in quantites of 100. When I asked the distributor for a datasheet, all I got was crickets. By all indications, the only truly new Germanium is coming from China. It is very expensive to set up a semiconductor fab line. Over a million bucks, and that's just the cost to add a fab line in an existing foundry. Given the low demand for Ge parts compared to every other semiconductor technology, it's no surprise that there are no US foundries cranking out Germanium. The business model is a little different in China where labor is nearly free and quality standards are highly variable.

As for NTE, check out their website. They call themselves an electronics supplier. They make no claim to be a manufacturer. Someone else makes their stuff and puts the NTE logo & part number on it. Very common in the industry. If you buy a large enough quantity, semiconductor manufacturers will put whatever marking on the part you want.
 
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