Buddy's Breadboard and Circuit Design Notes

Alright. Here's version 3 of the Spooky Dookie.

R3 changed to 68k. Diodes swapped out to 1n4148 (standard). BITE control changed to a C20k (100k was too much and I didn't have a 50) and acting as a voltage divider which can dial out the clipping. Once you dial the diodes out the volume goes up quite a bit, but that can be tamed. VOLUME upped to A250k. Thanks for looking out @Chuck D. Bones

I think this may be called done since I don't think there's much more I can do unless someone wants a go at it. It gets loud (booster), a bass and treble control, and clipping control for just a 1 transistor circuit. It's been sitting on my breadboard for a week, but I haven't had much time playing though it (maybe 10-15 min). This was a cool little project to put together some little circuit Legos. Maybe someone will make a PCB for this some day. I may commit this to vero or I may not. I've got a lot of house projects right now, so this is on the back burner for a bit.

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In the end of the circuit when everything is gettin' kinda dirty
I dial you up and ask you for more gain to see if it gets gritty
First, you're not SHO, LPB-1 with clipping diodes and "BITE"
and then there's "CUT" that keeps things tight

Boost is kinda crazy with a Spooky little Dookie like you



 
Another breadboard project finished up here. I've had this one on the side while working on the Spooky Dookie.

I posted a Fuzz Face tutorial recently. It's a pure breadboarding tutorial rather than circuit analysis. For such a simple circuit, it is deceptively complex in how everything works together. The good news is that pretty much everything on a FF is tweakable. If you want to see that here's the link.


Anyways, what I put on the breadboard is the DAM Meathead dark version. It's dark because there are 2 filter caps in Q1 and Q2 that get rid of the highs. The stock version works pretty well on bass. On guitar not so much simply because too many highs are taken off. So, what I wanted to was reach a happy medium where it COULD work on both. I think I've found it.

Ho hum. YAFF (yet another fuzz face). TL/DR. Thank you, next.

But wait! There's more!

I have a pedal I already cooked up that I needed to replace one of the circuits with. 2 one knob fuzzes in one box. One of them has my NUT FUZZ. The other one is a Phantom Octave fuzz which uses a LM386 and found the stipboard layout via Tagboard. I wasn't 100% thrilled with the latter and this has been sitting on my bench for nearly a year.


So, I've got a tweaked fuzz face to my liking, but I want it to have the "magic eye" where a LED lights up only when I play to complete this build. Our local circuit wizard Mr. @Chuck D. Bones was kind enough to point me in the right direction. To do this you'll need another transistor and a few parts. The unlabelled bjt would be Q2 in a FF. R2 below sets the maximum brightness. R3 sets the minimum brightness. If you change the bias of a "stock" FF, you'll need to tweak R2 and R3 accordingly. For Q1 below I just threw in a BC549c and she works!!!

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So, the full schematic would look like this. C2 and C6 here are optional and not true to the original FF. It may make more sense to up the volume pot value, but this will work.
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Here's the stripboard layout with the "magic eye." I haven't built it yet, but it looks ok to me. With my tweaked cap values and magic eye, I felt that this is no longer a "true" DAM Meathead. As an homage, I've felt the need to christen this circuit the "Butthead Fuzz".

Edit: This layout has been verified and works perfectly!

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