182julien44
Active member
- Build Rating
This is probably my 20th fuzz face type circuit build and my first using BC183. I'm so happy with that build, here's how I got here:
So I have this old fuzz face type pedal built here in Montreal called the MJM London Fuzz. It was my first fuzz pedal and it, and always is, my baseline for a good Fuzz Face circuit. It is the GE Version with a Bias knob.
As I said, I've built about 20 FF type pedals and none were up to my London Fuzz. I would spend hours measuring, matching and auditing transistors and none of my pedals would sound «right». I tried many circuits here, Ge, Si, Tone bender Mk1.5, etc. Every pedals would sound good, even great but never had this thing my London Fuzz had. Every Ge builds would have a different clipping and mid content, BC108C were too high gain to my liking and BC109 had a je ne sais quoi «wrong».
Now that I think about it, I just remembered my London Fuzz was the reason I started building pedals. I remember opening it up, about 10 years ago, and saying to myself «Yeah, I can build that, it is so simple» and Lord was I wrong lol.
So now we are here, BC183 and I am so happy. It sounds different enough from my London Fuzz that I can justify owning both but it also behave the same way the London Fuzz does. It is the best of both worlds. It is another flavour of FF but does exactly what I want another flavour to do. It has more gain than the GE but it cleans up very nicely. The bias on my build is also more «powerful». It goes from full fuzz madness to a scratchy velcro like dying battery tone.
Overall, I'm really exited and Happy with this build.
I used a Gorva switch (my favorite 3PDT), I am trying neutrik stereo jacks and I reused an old enclosure from another FF build that that was laying around for years because a customer wanted a different design with the same circuit.
EDIT: I just noticed that I haven't soldered the LED on the board lol. Typical me lol, it happens more times that I would like to admit. I'll do it tonight!
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