ragamuffin
Active member
What's better than a Sunman fuzz by Analogface? Two Sunmans by Analogface!
I built this pair for my brother and I. He's the older one, and I hold him responsible for getting me into rock music/guitars/gear. We're both fuzz face fans, so I decided to build some for us. He'll have to wait till Christmas to get his though.
Anyways, I took a pair of 1590B enclosures, painted them gold along with the bias knobs, decorated with a red paint pen to look like a certain boutique Fuzz Face that won't be named, and clear coated in semi-gloss.
Under the hood things are pretty standard, the only "unique" things being that I sourced B5k pots with center detents like the original, used illuminated LED ring footswitches (and changed the CLR value down to a 470R to suit), and that I used some nos Soviet P416B transistors (which have a funky pinout) from Small Bear. Small Bear measured the hFEs at about 80 and 100 for both sets, my cheapo TC-1 tester measured the gains a little lower, and with very low leakages.
The builds went pretty smoothly other than when I pulled a total newb move and soldered one of the pots to the wrong side of the board, and I found that it kind of nice to work on two of the same pedal at once; less time spent fumbling around looking for the right resistor values, etc.
They sound pretty darn good! I like them best with the bias turned up a little to about -5 volts, fuzz knob at max, guitar volume rolled back just a tad, pedal volume set to unity. I installed transistor sockets, but I don't currently have any other germanium transistors to audition; will do in the future though.
I built this pair for my brother and I. He's the older one, and I hold him responsible for getting me into rock music/guitars/gear. We're both fuzz face fans, so I decided to build some for us. He'll have to wait till Christmas to get his though.
Anyways, I took a pair of 1590B enclosures, painted them gold along with the bias knobs, decorated with a red paint pen to look like a certain boutique Fuzz Face that won't be named, and clear coated in semi-gloss.
Under the hood things are pretty standard, the only "unique" things being that I sourced B5k pots with center detents like the original, used illuminated LED ring footswitches (and changed the CLR value down to a 470R to suit), and that I used some nos Soviet P416B transistors (which have a funky pinout) from Small Bear. Small Bear measured the hFEs at about 80 and 100 for both sets, my cheapo TC-1 tester measured the gains a little lower, and with very low leakages.
The builds went pretty smoothly other than when I pulled a total newb move and soldered one of the pots to the wrong side of the board, and I found that it kind of nice to work on two of the same pedal at once; less time spent fumbling around looking for the right resistor values, etc.
They sound pretty darn good! I like them best with the bias turned up a little to about -5 volts, fuzz knob at max, guitar volume rolled back just a tad, pedal volume set to unity. I installed transistor sockets, but I don't currently have any other germanium transistors to audition; will do in the future though.
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