About the fuzz circuit in the Electric-FX Downtown

tegendemuur

Member
There isn't much available on this pedal online. Seems to be too big for most for what it does? I did find a few helpful mods, like a tweak against a volume drop and such things. The fuzz bit is the weak part, for me (I don't like big muffs), if the demos are to be trusted. So I looked at the schematic, and comparing bits and pieces with articles, I figured there's only this little symetrical diode clipping going on. Am I correct in this? If so, getting a mini rotary with 4-clipping types daughterboard, ala Parentheses, seems like an easy implementation to get a bit more out of the fuzz side. Is there anything else I could do?

Update 1. Per the PCB designer: "I think the fuzz looks like it's based on the opamp big muff, so there wouldn't be any transistors. Instead of a single opamp like in the muff, it's built around/split between a dual opamp (NJM4558) and it only has 2 diodes D9, D10. I'm not sure how much modification you could really do to it unfortunately."

So, there has to be a change of plans, then! As I am adamant on using the exact same pedal layout as my Parentheses, I could squeeze in some neat single-knob distortion circuit in there, to have the fuzz feed into (the exceptionally tiny Acapulco, DOD 250 variations, and the Distortion+ circuits come to mind, as one-knobbers with a trimpot on board). But implementation of a rotary will be weird, except... If I could find 3 sweet spots via trim pots and then do away with the pot on the distortion board... A regular pot makes a whole lot more sense, and would still look te same.

Thinking of testing the insertions at the green markings.

(Yeah, I'm using this thread a a typing-out-loud thing.) schematic-fzzle.png
 
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