owlexifry
Well-known member
after beginning my dive into breadboarding with some soviet NPN Ge, i wasn’t really all that excited with the sounds i was initially getting on the fuzz face circuit.
briefly tried silicons, still wasn’t that great, although the ones i tried were like 350hfe (bc108). gonna have to revisit a silicon fuzz face with some lower gain units eventually.
but with germaniums, NPN or PNP, it took a while for me to learn that it just always sounded better (to me) with the leakier units.
(it’s also difficult to know how accurate/meaningful my numbers are when the ambient temperature is at the mercy of the poorly insulated room that can get quite cold in winter and hot in summer.)
in sep/oct last year, i had measured, bagged and labelled some MP38A, and in june (cold) this year they were measuring a lot lower.
i’m guessing these values were measured somewhere around 16-17’C room temp:
with enough leakage i was actually able to get it to do the cleanup thing with the guitar volume control. it's pretty nifty.
and i had no idea how good it would sound when it’s cleaned up. has this beautiful crispy preampy thing going on.
anyway, because i was so stoked on how this circuit was sounding, i felt it deserved the wooden perf board treatment.
underestimated the size of the board, it was a bit too big and a hell of a squeeze.
the carbon comp resistors were actually salvaged from an amp build that was stripped and rebuilt, they were just sitting in a box of pulled parts. thought they'd be a good fit.
DEMO:
it might seem out of place using a jackson dinky for this demo - but it’s a lot easier to do the cleanup thing with a single master volume control (vs. les paul with x2 volumes) and it has some nice split coil modes that none of my other guitars have
briefly tried silicons, still wasn’t that great, although the ones i tried were like 350hfe (bc108). gonna have to revisit a silicon fuzz face with some lower gain units eventually.
but with germaniums, NPN or PNP, it took a while for me to learn that it just always sounded better (to me) with the leakier units.
(it’s also difficult to know how accurate/meaningful my numbers are when the ambient temperature is at the mercy of the poorly insulated room that can get quite cold in winter and hot in summer.)
in sep/oct last year, i had measured, bagged and labelled some MP38A, and in june (cold) this year they were measuring a lot lower.
i’m guessing these values were measured somewhere around 16-17’C room temp:
| Q1 | Q2 |
| 48.4 hfe, 182ua leak | 69.6 hfe, 189ua leak |
with enough leakage i was actually able to get it to do the cleanup thing with the guitar volume control. it's pretty nifty.
and i had no idea how good it would sound when it’s cleaned up. has this beautiful crispy preampy thing going on.
anyway, because i was so stoked on how this circuit was sounding, i felt it deserved the wooden perf board treatment.
underestimated the size of the board, it was a bit too big and a hell of a squeeze.
the carbon comp resistors were actually salvaged from an amp build that was stripped and rebuilt, they were just sitting in a box of pulled parts. thought they'd be a good fit.
DEMO:
it might seem out of place using a jackson dinky for this demo - but it’s a lot easier to do the cleanup thing with a single master volume control (vs. les paul with x2 volumes) and it has some nice split coil modes that none of my other guitars have
