Carbon Black Fuzz w/ few interesting mods

[gila_crisis]

This is the Carbon Black (EQD Black Ash fuzz) I've built today.
It's a very nice take on these Tonebender MK2 fuzzes, on which I did few mods and tweaks.
Transisitor are 2N2369A (metal cans, I found these on musikding.de, and were rated as the lowest gain available in stock).
I followed few suggestions found here and changed 2 components to have a wider bias trim range: R6 36k and trim pot 25k.
I liked so much the results that I decided to replace the trim with an external pot, as there is a wide range available, from smooth thick fuzz up to velcro/gated splatter bonanza!
As few suggest on this forum I used a B50k Tone pot and C5k fuzz pot (nice smooth range of control, from low gain overdrive, up to high gain wall of sound).
As many reported, the Tone Knob is not intrusive, but it does a good job filtering the high end. It's not a "heavy filtering/high cut", but it works in a pleasant way.
This said if you wanna build this and keep it as a 3 knobs unit, you may have the Tone knob as an internal set and forget trim and instead move the bias trim on an external pot, as you get way more range and interesting sounds!

 

[gila_crisis]

Now it's done! I decided I needed a Bass control as well (super handy if you use this with synthesizers), so I replaced C1 with the Fat control you find on the Basic Audio Scarab Deluxe schematic (I used 1nF and 220uF caps, with a 100K pot).
Now we're going places with this one!!!

 

[gila_crisis]

This fuzz is amazing, and really invites you to try and mod stuff!
I was comparing the Tonebender Mk2 with the Carbon fuzz schematics, and I noticed that on the Bender's Q2 there's not a resistor going from emitter to ground (R7 on the Carbon/Ash, 1k). I installed a switch to jumper R7 et voilà: now you have a high/low gain switch!
Super simple and effective.