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The MP39B should work, at least on paper. I prefer transistors with an hFE in the 30-50 range (as measured on a DCA55) and as low leakage as possible for Q1 in the Harmonic Percolator.

I've build several Tone Bender Mk. III x Big Muff circuits, and this one might be my favorite. You should build one if you haven't already—grab a Scythe and get started. Compared with the Yellow Hybrid Tone Bender and the Colorsound Supa Tone Bender, the Tone Reaper has more Tone Bender Mk. III...

You could also have a switch that connects/disconnects Q5's connector from the rest of the circuit. One of the contemporary Super Fuzz clones uses that approach, but I don't remember off the top of my head which one. I think Q6 had an hFE around 130. I tried some lower and higher gain ones, but...

You should check out the diode comparison that @thomasbe86 put together. Suffice to say, the difference between the 1S1588/1N4148/1N914 probably won't be noticeable:

So I've done both. I used the pot between the notch filter and ground (a la your modified schematic) on my Ibanez Standard Fuzz build, but that has a much larger effect on the output volume than using a 50k pot to pan between the notch filter and voltage divider (a la your original schematic)...

Yet another awesome circuit from the Boneyard. Thanks, @Chuck D. Bones! I built mine with a BC549C (hFE 550) for Q1, a pair of MP35 germanium transistors (hFE ~50, leakage ~100) for Q2 and Q3, and a 2N7000 for Q4. Here are the gerber, BOM, and a Tayda drill template for anyone who wants to...

The Harmonic Percolator is a really fun little circuit. If you still have it on your breadboard, try playing with different values of R1. You can get some cool sub-octave undertones with large values (2.2M-5M). Replacing R3 or R4 with potentiometers is also a cool mod (try a B250k and a 62k...

This looks and sounds awesome! Definitely going to breadboard and/or build this.

It's a CDT3460-02 LED flasher IC. It seems to be big in Japan, based on a quick Google search. Here's the data sheet.

Quite a few of us here have large stashes of germanium transistors and transistor testers. What are you looking to build?

Personally, I prefer having the leads over a built-in slot. You will run into trouble if you keep hooking/unhooking them to transistors, but that's also not the optimal way to use the DCA55/75. I hook mine up to some of the longer breadboard jumper cables from Tayda, plug whatever I'm testing...

I’m curious about this. What would make one MP38A sound good but not the others if it isn’t the bias/hFE/leakage? Is it hfe? Collector-base capacitance? Something else?

Well, there goes my excuse for not building one.* *Yes, I know that you can just jumper it without any impact on the tone. But it looks cool, so I'm not building one without it.

The TY-141P used in the Duocast/Simulcast would be a good one.

I saw yours when I was doing my research before building mine—it's a very cool build. I think that the Chuck mod version might just be different enough to justify a second build, especially if you tweak the tone stack.

No, I think it was the thread from the Wish List forum that Chuck referenced. But the mods that he mentions are the same. Edit: Is the whole wish list subforum gone now?

Forgot to add the takeaway, so here it is. Despite its strong Muff ancestry, this sounds more like a Tone Bender than a Big Muff. There's some Muff-like (phase cancellation?) character from the tone stack, but the distortion tone and interaction with the volume knob are much more similar to the...

Another Tone Bender that is more of a Big Muff. Take the first two stages of a Colorsound Supa Tone Bender, add a third stage that is part Big Muff and part Tone Bender Mk. III (with a Zener diode rather than the customary 10k/10k voltage divider), stick a weird variant of a Big Muff Tone Stack...

You should be fine with any NPN germanium transistor with low-ish leakage and gain between 50 and 100. There's a bias trimmer for the emitter resistor, so it can accommodate a pretty wide range of transistors.

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