What do I need to know before I order my first transistors?

Y

yossarian

New member
Hi,
I'd like to build my first pedals. Ultimately I'd like to build a Rangemaster, a Fuzz Face, a Colorsound Power Boost and a Hybrid Tone Bender. (I know I won't be building five pedals as a noob, but that's what I want to build in the foreseeable future and I want to order the necessary parts to keep the shipping costs in check)

I will mainly get kits from Fuzz dog, Aion and PedalPCB but the whole point of going DIY for me is to experiment with different transistors, component values, etc. Hence I want to get some extra tranistors to try out in these circuits. I'd like something 'special' but it doesn't have to be the rarest, sought-after transistor. 'Just' a really good sounding one.

What would you recommend? Lacking experience I don't see myself sifting through rough batches bought on ebay. I know Small Bear sells matched transistors but buying from Europe this gets expensive real fast. I would like to try NOS and modern tranistors. I don't mind spending more if it saves me time and trouble. Where else should I look?

My plans so far:

What do you think?
Rangemaster kit from Fuzz Dog: extra OC140 transistor from Small Bear
Colorsound Power Boost kit from Fuzz Dog: BC169C or BC184L from ???
Fuzz Face kit from Aion: tell me where to find some fun new and vintage ones; in terms of Analogman Sunfaces I like 2SB175 and BART. I haven't found a place where I can find them. Small Bear sells 2SB but they don't specifiy if the transistors will have the right specs and at $8 per can I cannot buy 20 just to find out.
Second Si Fuzz Face with ???
Hybrid Tone Bender kit from PedalPCB: OC140?

Apart from the cool looks, is it worth to look up some other vintage components? (tropical fish, Piher, etc.)

Thanks a lot for your time!
 
Ge transistors on ebay from alexer in Ukraine and the other guy from Bulgaria. The latter sells matched pairs with gain and leakage readings. Still cheap.

The name doesn't matter. I wouldn't pay for OC/NOS anything unless they are guaranteed to be specific readings. Look up the gain and leakage ballparks you need for those circuits and make sure to breadboard and tweak the circuits before building. Get the right voltages.

BARTs are big ass Russian transistors. Gt404 and such. I have several of the NPN variety. Lots of leakage makes for gated fuzzes.
Also look into MP21 and so on. Google the specs for the gain buckets.

Tons of info on this forum.
 
@andare is right. Skip the OCxxx parts, which are expensive and are often out of spec rejects these days. Fortunately, you don’t need parts with a specific name. For the Rangemaster, Fuzz Face, and Hybrid Tone Bender, you’re fine using low-leakage germanium transistors with hFE values between 60 and 120. That means that you can use inexpensive, reliable, and low noise ex-Soviet transistors like P416b or GT309b/GT309E/GT309G. You can get like twenty of those from Alexer1 on eBay for less than one OC140 that may or may not be some builder’s reject. I’ve bought both P416b and GT309E transistors from Oleg; all of them were in spec and none were hissy or noisy. If you plan on building other germanium fuzzes that need somewhat leaky transistors (e.g. Tone Bender Mk. 1 or 2), it might be worth grabbing some GT115G transistors with the same order to save on shipping. They’re leaky enough and in the right gain range for both of those circuits. But like andare said, search the forums. Other people have had similar questions before and there are lots of helpful answers in those threads.
 
@PedalBuilder @andare
Thanks a lot. I tried the search but it's a little overwhelming. You're answers were already helpful, so thanks again.
Alexer1 is one of the ebayers I also found, good to hear that you've had good expereinces. I haven't come across Oleg's ebay shop yet, however. Is he behind LZ electronics?
 
MBFX said:
I would start with Si transistors. They work predictably. Ge transistors can be a huge pain in the ass.
Click to expand...
I've heard this often enough. Could you elaborate why a germanium in the right gain range would be a potential PITA? Prone to noise?
 
yossarian said:
I've heard this often enough. Could you elaborate why a germanium in the right gain range would be a potential PITA? Prone to noise?
Click to expand...
They’re more temperature sensitive and exhibit some current leakage between terminals. If you use very low-leakage transistors like the ones that I mentioned, then they’re no more of a pain to use than silicon transistors IMHO. In my experience, a germanium transistor with leakage low leakage, say under ~10 µA, will keep its bias stable across a 20°F temperature range. By contrast, a leaky germanium transistor, e.g. over 200 µA might start sounding off when the temperature changes by as little as 5°F in some circuits. For whatever reason, even the leakier Soviet transistors (GT115, MP21) are more temperature stable than certain western ones (e.g. 2N2043, AC153). But if you’re staying low-leakage, they’re not really all that difficult to use.
 
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If these are your first builds, I'd hit the pause button for a second.
Ordering a set of pre-matched transistors for those builds, or sticking to silicon, would be my recommendation. Maybe even asking nicely here and someone would set you up with a pair. Do you have a means/knowledge to measure/match leakage?
I'll echo @MBFX , Ge is a huge pita. So much so that, personally, I'm almost over it. It's almost not worth the financial turmoil and time to me at this point. I would also caution, that if you do go down the Russian Ge road, take notes and ask questions about which ones to order for which circuit. Even then, you may order 40 and find only a few, at best, that hit the needed specs. You can't really trust the published specs on sovcom's listings. Maybe I've just have bad luck but I've bought several lots that all measured significantly lower than published specs. One in particular that measured in single digits hfe or diodes. I'm fairly sure most have been pre sorted/were rejects. This is the case for most Ge transistors today. In other words, a lot of them are useless.
Silicon fuzzes can sounds awesome, it doesn't have to be Ge. And it's way cheaper to get a variety of Si transistors.

TLDR:
Either order from a person/vendor that will sale you measured and matched setd(gain and leakage) or stick to Si for your first couple. It's very easy to waste a significant amount of money and time going deep down the Ge rabbit hole. I say all this because I don't want you, or any other new builders reading this in the future, to get frustrated early in your building career trying to chase the mojo ghost. And to answer your second set of questions regarding other mojo parts, no. Stick to new stock known good parts. You won't hear a tropical fish cap in a cranked fuzz. You will waste extra money and have to deal with the pita of trying to get that capacitor to fit the board/in the enclosure. Again, no need for the added frustration and cost starting out.
That's just like, my opinion man.
Happy building.

Edit:
P.S., I wouldn't trust Small bear to match any transistors at this point in time. I would go to pedal hacker before small bear in this instance.
 
To reiterate what others have said: I’d personally start with a Si fuzz face first, then maybe your second build move to Ge. I’ve gotten Ge transistors from Nall bear years ago that were good, but his stock seems to have been less desireable and more expensive recently. Stompbox parts also has them from time to time, again not cheap, but I think a little better prices than Small Bear.
 
Thanks everybody. I hear you. I'm asking all this in advance because I see a window of free time coming and man, these windows have become rare. So I want to be kind of prepared to experiment but I'm definitely not hunting the "I'll-be-building-the-fuzz-of-my-life"-ghost.

I'll focus on Silicon and maybe a set or two of a trusted dealer or a nice forum member.

And yes, the rest of the time I'm browsing the forum to make heads and tails of all this. Seems to be a fun hobby, however.
 
yossarian said:
I've heard this often enough. Could you elaborate why a germanium in the right gain range would be a potential PITA? Prone to noise?
Click to expand...

It's the leakage thing. Even really crappy leaky Ge transistors will at least make a useable boost, but get it in a Fuzz Face and all of a sudden both transistors are impossible to bias. There's also the consideration that you MUST breadboard, 99% of the time will need alternative component values and possibly extra components, and that requires a good working knowledge of what the circuit is doing and how.

I beat my head against the wall for two weeks trying to figure all this stuff out, only to find I had bad transistors! I learned a lot, but it was not fun and I don't recommend it.

What I do recommend is buying some GT402 transistors from @StompBoxParts if you absolutely need some Ge fuzz and boost in your life. Out of all the Ge transistors I have tried, these have been the best and most reliable. I might be screwing myself out of them by telling you all this, but you can almost always get them biased correctly using the stock Dallas Arbiter FF schematic without a bias trimpot. They have a weird pinout and they are huge, so you'll have to be creative about installing them. I usually leave about half the lead length, heat shrink each lead, solder to the board, and bend the transistor out of the way.

EDIT: I forgot to mention that if you act quickly, you can get some good Ge transistors on the cheap from Guitar PCB Mania. Go to the site, click on Sale Items, and look at the Bonamassa Fuzz Face set.

szukalski said:
Low gain (~100) Si Fuzzface is really nice and competes well with Ge.
Click to expand...

This is very true. Even a set around 250hFE is nice and approachable, and cleans up OK with the volume knob. I haven't had great luck with "dot" transistors so far, but 2N2222s are great for this. You can even get old metal can ones, so they still look retro when you open the pedal.
 
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I would also softly recommend, if staying with Si for the time being, trying to stick with negative ground/NPN until you have familiarized yourself with some circuits and have a basic working knowledge of conventional current flow.
Nothing wrong with positive ground/PNP circuits but it just throws a few more variables in there. Additionally, most more modern circuits are NG/NPN. You can still use Germanium as NPN Ge does exist, see GT404 BARTs.
Infact, I've had better luck in finding "in spec" NPN Ge transistors. I'm not sure why this is. Be it luck or maybe because NPN is "newer" tech so maybe manufacturing processes were yielding better production tollerences? Idk. But they're still a PITA. There's really no reason today, in my humble opinion, to build anything positive ground unless it's because you want to build a 100% authentic circuit. You can build great sounding fuzzes with NPN, beit Si or Ge. Additionally, focusing on only NPN Ge affords you the ability to mix and match chemistries more easily as most will have a larger stock of NPN Si vs PNP Si. And it will lower the parts count and cost just a little.
But that's just where I'm at. No point in fighting charge pump noise or isolated power starting out.

Note, PNP transistors don't necessarily mean the circuit is positive ground. See the Bosstone.
 
MBFX said:
I forgot to mention that if you act quickly, you can get some good Ge transistors on the cheap from Guitar PCB Mania. Go to the site, click on Sale Items, and look at the Bonamassa Fuzz Face set.
Click to expand...
Thanks for the tips! Yeah, I've seen the GT404s on StompBoxParts. Good to hear that they seem to be alright. Don't worry, if they're all gone tomorrow it wasn't me (well, maybe three or four might find their way to France).

But for the life of me I cannot find the Guitar PCB Mania set you were referring to...
 
yossarian said:
Thanks for the tips! Yeah, I've seen the GT404s on StompBoxParts. Good to hear that they seem to be alright. Don't worry, if they're all gone tomorrow it wasn't me (well, maybe three or four might find their way to France).

But for the life of me I cannot find the Guitar PCB Mania set you were referring to...
Click to expand...

That's because I told you to go to the wrong site. Here you go:

guitarpcb.com

(Limited) Bonamassa Germanium PNP Fuzz Face Set - GuitarPCB

Bonamassa style NOS Germanium Fuzz Face Set.
guitarpcb.com guitarpcb.com
 
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