Hi everyone. The Kilimanjaro fuzz board has been outta stock for a long time and I've wanted to build one, so I used a Tone Vendor MKI board and just did the changes needed on board. The Kilimanjaro is basically a MKI with a couple of bells and whistles extra.
The trimmer on the Kilimanjaro makes adjustments SO much easier. It lets you dial in so many transistor options for transistor #2.
Transistors #1&3 still need to be leaky, like 250+ua. But transistor #2 can be anything from low leakage (50ua) up to medium leakage (200ua), the trimmer will allow adjustment to dial it in. Personally, I like very low leakage for Q2, this enables the trimmer to be dialed in for more resistance on it so the gain of that stage goes up and it's more better. Lol! For Q2 with 200ua the trimmer had to be dialed down to around 500 ohms. With a low leakage transistor (50ua) in that position, the trimmer needs to be dialed up to around 1.5k like the original MKI. This makes the output of the box louder. More trimmer resistance also gives more variance to the attack (fuzz) knob adjustment.
The 220k resistor on Q2 base also makes this much easier to dial in than the 470k that the original MKI has.
The trimmer on the Kilimanjaro makes adjustments SO much easier. It lets you dial in so many transistor options for transistor #2.
Transistors #1&3 still need to be leaky, like 250+ua. But transistor #2 can be anything from low leakage (50ua) up to medium leakage (200ua), the trimmer will allow adjustment to dial it in. Personally, I like very low leakage for Q2, this enables the trimmer to be dialed in for more resistance on it so the gain of that stage goes up and it's more better. Lol! For Q2 with 200ua the trimmer had to be dialed down to around 500 ohms. With a low leakage transistor (50ua) in that position, the trimmer needs to be dialed up to around 1.5k like the original MKI. This makes the output of the box louder. More trimmer resistance also gives more variance to the attack (fuzz) knob adjustment.
The 220k resistor on Q2 base also makes this much easier to dial in than the 470k that the original MKI has.
