Fuzz Captain bias / sustain

[Ajitator]

Hi. I've got a Fuzz Captain (aka silicon MI Audio G.I. Fuzz) build that i got in a trade. Everything looks up to spec (in comparison with the build doc).

The circuit has a fair bit of gating built in, as it's basically a supercharged mk2 Tone Bender with various eq options added, from what I understand. But I'd like to use it mainly for doom / stoner style playing, which needs more sustain whereas the abrupt gating can sound a bit awkward. Playing with the Bias knob affects the gating, but there's only a very small window where the gating isn't too noticeable.

I read somewhere that silicon bender circuits add extra resistors that go to positive from Q1 and Q3, to simulate the leakage from germanium resistors and thereby prevent too much gating from occurring. The fuzz captain does seem to have these (R4 & R9 on the schematic, both 4.7Kohm).

So would increasing the resistance of these two resistors decrease the gating? Anyone have experience with this? Or are there any better ways to prevent the gating?

 

[Ajitator]

UPDATE: Ended up removing C10 (3n9 film capacitor) for an unrelated reason [the STDP switch on mine was functioning as 'on-on' instead of 'on-off-on' and i wanted to be able to access the 'off'/no-treble-cut setting without having to do the old behringer super fuzz secret setting trick].

This has for some reason improved the function of the bias knob, making it usable throughout the whole sweep, whereas previously it would gate too much at one end and completely cut the signal before nearing the other end. The pedal overall seems to have a bit more sustain now and i could swear the tone has improved.

Losing the maximum-treble-cut setting on the switch doesn't seem like a big sacrifice as it wasn't that great anyway, would cut way too much presence and volume compared to the other settings.

P.S. I have the internal gain trim set to maximum gain (all the way counter-clockwise) as this seems to get the best tones.

P.P.S. Someone needs to make a version of this pedal that replaces the treble-cut switch and muff style tone filter with dedicated bass and treble cut knobs. And preferably also change the Body (i.e. mids) & Load (i.e. pre-gain) to linear pots or some other kind. With the audio pots the majority of the mid-frequencies and pre-gain have already come in after like a 1/6th turn of the knob, leaving not much room for variety of scooped and lower-gain/roll-off tones.

P.P.P.S. You can get some great Hyper/Super-fuzz like tones out of this pedal by setting the pre-gain all the way down (i.e. all the way 'rolled off' and boosting the crap out of it with another pedal. Add mids and bias to taste.