Psst i got a secret

Preverb said:
There is a servo germanium fuzz face here that might make it to PCB at some point. I might be wrong but I think it is designed to not be susceptible to drift and temperature fluctuations. I wonder if a pickup simulator could be added to that design to deal with impedance? Then it would essentially have all the features of the Benson fuzz...
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Dear God I hope not, a "pickup simulator" would ruin that design. :eek:

The CONTOUR pot takes care of any impedance issues. :cool:
 
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Chuck D. Bones said:
By all indications, the only truly new Germanium is coming from China. It is very expensive to set up a semiconductor fab line.
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Chuck D. Bones said:
They call themselves an electronics supplier. They make no claim to be a manufacturer. Someone else makes their stuff and puts the NTE logo & part number on it.
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Good points. Do you think even the ‘new’ production is actually newly fabbed or repackaged NOS? There’s a lot of opacity here.
 
benny_profane said:
I’m not entirely sure what the situation is here, but these seem to be new production Ge devices. So this is a possible source. SBP has sold them before.
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Chuck D. Bones said:
I looked into the "new" AC127s that SBP was getting from New Jersey Semiconductor. They are old die newly packaged. I got a price quote from one of NJS's distributors that was about 1/2 of SBP's price in quantites of 100. When I asked the distributor for a datasheet, all I got was crickets.
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Nothing new about the germanium stuff we get other than the NJS logo and date stamping on the heatsink. I definitely worded something incorrectly last year because of a misinterpretation on my end. And of course, we sort out the really leaky ones (10-20% of a "good" batch) then sort the rest by gain so builders can make their own desired set.

Datasheet attached (and relevant website pages). Shoot us a message next time!
 

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benny_profane said:
Good points. Do you think even the ‘new’ production is actually newly fabbed or repackaged NOS? There’s a lot of opacity here.
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NOS = New Old Stock, as in they are new (straight off the production line, in packaging), but have sat on a shelf for a while. This is different from used, where they may have been returned from a distributor or even been desoldered/snipped from a PCB. The specs & quality of NOS components should be in line with new components, but if you're buying from a seller far down the distribution line (eBay/AliExpress/some pedal-specific sites), then you're at the mercy of their sorting & quality control.

Both NJS & NTE offer NOS Ge transistors, but it's my understanding that neither manufacture the Ge transistors they currently sell (if anyone has info on NJS, I'm happy to stand corrected). NTE has actually never been a manufacturer, they were the sister company to ECG/Sylvania back in the day, and basically sold "equivalent" parts for repair & electronics shops. This doesn't mean the quality (which you WILL pay for) is any lower, and I'd rather get Ge transistors from them than from a sketchy supplier/

The only MFG that I'm aware of recently running a Ge production or wafer packaging line is Central Semi, but they EOL'd theirs in 2016 with the other TO-5 packages.
 
The specs and quality of NOS components may have suffered simply because of aging. Exposure to even miniscule amounts of moisture will degrade and eventually kill semiconductor die, so the AC127 die that NJS repackaged needed to be stored in a dry N2 atmosphere from when they were fabbed until they were packaged. Packaged transistors can leak and admit moisture too, which is why hi-rel manufacturers perform leak testing. I doubt NJS did that.
 
Chuck D. Bones said:
The specs and quality of NOS components may have suffered simply because of aging. Exposure to even miniscule amounts of moisture will degrade and eventually kill semiconductor die, so the AC127 die that NJS repackaged needed to be stored in a dry N2 atmosphere from when they were fabbed until they were packaged. Packaged transistors can leak and admit moisture too, which is why hi-rel manufacturers perform leak testing. I doubt NJS did that.
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I didn't know moisture was such an issue! I was wondering how they stored wafers, and the potential moisture issue doesn't fill me with confidence for repackaged dies...

That must especially be problematic with larger through-hole packages with a lot of empty space in them - like some Soviet transistors. Do you know if it's a reversible process (could you heat/dehumidify a batch of Ge transistors?) or does it end up in the semiconductor for good?
 
I also have concerns about die that's been stored for decades and changed hands.

Once the moisture gets in, it's all over. The good news is that metal cases with glass seals are very good, unless the glass gets a crack in it from a manufacturing defect or mechanical stress.
 
The new aion kits where released a few days ago. They do include matched germanium transistors, and are only about 8 bucks more expensive. I got the Deimos which is just a mkII tonebender, but with a catch. It has a switch that allows you to remove the first transistor of the tonebender to convert it to a fuzz face. I thought that was pretty neat. Just wanted to let you guys know if you where interested. They are in very limited supply though.
 
benny_profane said:
Well I was wrong above! Still don't know how Kevin pulled it off, but that's a pretty impressive move. Definitely glad I'm not doing support on those, though!
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I don't know how he did it either! Definitely impressive. Plus he's only charging a few dollars more. I honestly thought the kits would include the transistors but cost like 130 bucks or so.
 
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