Parenthesis Fuzz Boost problem

dann0banno

New member
Hello, I've got the Parenthesis Fuzz circuit working pretty nicely except for the boost. The distortion and octave work fine, but the boost lowers the volume substantially when engaged. It lowers the volume when only the boost is engaged and the octave and distortion are not as well. I believe I've got all the correct values in for resistors and capacitors in the boost circuit, and I'm also using a BS170 as per the documentation so I'm not sure what's wrong. I attached pictures of the whole board and close ups of what I think is the boost section.
 

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One way you can fix a lot of transistor issues is to socket them. I got some cheap sockets that I can cut to size. So, for these, it would be three sockets. Doing that helps in two ways: 1) you can easily fix the orientation and 2) you protect the transistor from overheating when soldering. Doesn't have to be done with every transistor...but the important ones? Most definitely. :D
 
Mosfets seem to be fragile, I killed the bs170 in mine by swapping guitars with the boost mode engaged, (‘fuzz’ side off) as soon as I plugged in the other guitar, boost mode was as you describe, until I swapped bs170’s. Must have been some static or something? Dunno, but now I make sure it’s off before changing guitars and I’ve had no problems since.
 
Yeah, I most certainly killed a few transistors in one pedal I was building. Got one turned around the wrong way and had to desolder it. Doing that is what I think killed it. If I had socketed it then it wouldn't have been an issue. Many transistors are quite sensitive to heat. Too much heat will kill them rather quickly, thus the reason why socketing is recommended.
 
Hi,

I'm confused here, I'm just finishing my build and the first try I got no sound out (bypass okay, but just some noise with distortion on), I'm a bit sick those days so it's just sitting at my table awaiting to be completed, I'll probably coming to create my own Troubleshooting post soon, but I'm going through the forum and noticed this placed the germanium diodes on the right side.

What I understood from the instructions is that when using the toggle switch we add them to the right side, like in this post here https://forum.pedalpcb.com/threads/parenthesis-fuzz-no-signal-when-switched-off.10284/

Any ideas what's up? Which is correct?
Thanks
 
@Budius You are correct, D1 and D2 are for the octave circuit. They need to be there for the octave to work. D8 and 9 are the “extra” clipping options with the rotary switch.
 
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