bazz fuzz pedal transistor type help

some things are becoming apparent:

I am terrible at soldering (probably one reason why things are not working!).

I dont get perfboard, if I solder a capacitor onto a strip then surely the current it touching both legs at once and not traveling "through" the capacitor? it would be hitting both at the same time? so I have to cut away the copper?

and

I think Maplin gave me wrong resistors. I looked up what i thought was a 100k but its 15ohms? its a blue resistor its brown green black silver brown. i looked it up on: http://hfradio.org/resistor/  .. this means I dont even have a 100k to experiment with! 

Disease8 said:

How come the original schematic works so well for other people and it only uses 10k resistor?

Click to expand...

Dunno, maybe they are driving it from an other pedal that has a buffer in it, or they have an active instrument; "works so well" is a subjective appreciation, you may not like it so much...

How do I match the right ohms on the DC 9V resistor to the correct input current of the transistor?

Click to expand...

Increase the value of the collector resistor to 100-220k.

Can I work that out with the transistors schematics? http://pdf1.alldatasheet.com/datasheet-pdf/view/37887/SAMSUNG/S9015.html

Click to expand...

The circuit is designed to work with a npn transistor; if you use a pnp, you need to reverse the battery polarity and that of the capacitors and diodes too.

At the moment I am using the s9015 with two 10uf caps and a 10k resistor. The sound is not a natural sounding distortion at all it sounds compressed and gated with hardly any decay. All the definition of the guitar is gone unlike the 8550 (when I had it sounding its best).

Click to expand...

Hardly surprizing! since the transistor is out of operation; the distortion you get is passive.

the circuit works as it says in the schematic as its a popular simple fuzz circuit for beginners..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rv5iQ_aenX8

Disease8 said:

the circuit works as it says in the schematic as its a popular simple fuzz circuit for beginners..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rv5iQ_aenX8

Click to expand...

Check on the vid, at the beginning, as it mentions a booster and a buffer in front of the fuzz. And it should indeed work somewhat with an npn transistor, but no way with a pnp.

abbey road d enfer said:

Disease8 said:

the circuit works as it says in the schematic as its a popular simple fuzz circuit for beginners..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rv5iQ_aenX8

Click to expand...

Check on the vid, at the beginning, as it mentions a booster and a buffer in front of the fuzz. And it should indeed work somewhat with an npn transistor, but no way with a pnp.

Click to expand...

at the beginning he is clearly playing through the circuit no buffer or preamp.

Here he is instructing on how to build it as he sells the PCBs. They work as a stand alone pedal like a guitar pedal should I believe .
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j4k1yV9-Jig

he sells them on his website: http://www.diyguitarpedals.com.au/shop/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=1&products_id=31

Disease8 said:

abbey road d enfer said:

Disease8 said:

the circuit works as it says in the schematic as its a popular simple fuzz circuit for beginners..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rv5iQ_aenX8

Click to expand...

Check on the vid, at the beginning, as it mentions a booster and a buffer in front of the fuzz. And it should indeed work somewhat with an npn transistor, but no way with a pnp.

Click to expand...

at the beginning he is clearly playing through the circuit no buffer or preamp.

Here he is instructing on how to build it as he sells the PCBs. They work as a stand alone pedal like a guitar pedal should I believe .
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j4k1yV9-Jig

he sells them on his website: http://www.diyguitarpedals.com.au/shop/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=1&products_id=31

Click to expand...

That's what I wrote, he teases you with a $4 kit, but makes the demo with a $50 setup.

no one is mentioning a boost or buffer its all over the internet sorry i just think you are wrong
http://home-wrecker.com/bazz.html

original schematic:
http://personal.inet.fi/koti/holmberg/images/bazz.jpg

finished pedal;#
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0PDQ6zMU4g

someone already replied on this thread even saying they had it working no active pickups, no buffer. It is just a normal guitar pedal but every simple I don't know how it works but been reading about it for days you are the first person to mention a buffer.

not just arguing for the sake of it this is just what I have seen..

I am trying to make a higher ohm resistor out of all the 10k's I have its sounding cleaner but its not distorting? Is it the higher the ohms the more distortion? AS when it was a low ohm it was too much distortion. ANyway this is confusing me to hell! been working on it for days!
What if I make my two s9014's into a darlington will that be better?

Disease8 said:

http://home-wrecker.com/bazz.html

Click to expand...

See how the collector resistor has gone up from 10k to 100k!

I am trying to make a higher ohm resistor out of all the 10k's I have its sounding cleaner but its not distorting? Is it the higher the ohms the more distortion? AS when it was a low ohm it was too much distortion. ANyway this is confusing me to hell! been working on it for days!
What if I make my two s9014's into a darlington will that be better?

Click to expand...

Are you sure you use a proper NPN transistor?

dooood

I just worked it out it just wasnt  high enough gain transistor. I made my own darlington out of two s9014's!
Its gone waaay beyond FUZZ into serious swedish black metal realms! it sounds like utter filth.. Very happy I finally sorted it.
Will post examples when I can record )its nearly 1am here in UK. The gain is rediculous on this thing! Still have some strange quirks going on like that choking, compression thing I described before. I just stuck with the 10k resistor as it showed in the schematic, he actually amended the schematic to have 10k instead of 100k.

Just need to learn how to tame this beast now, at a potentiometre or two. Clean it up a bit. Can't wait to share the monster!

Here forgive the bad playing it was so loud I didn't want to disturb people hah

https://soundcloud.com/jdominicjackson/guitar-fuzz-diy-test-3

Not sure how its gone to over the top into octave/harmonics land. The sustain is insane! For some reason the low notes distort a lot easier than the high ones (maybe mess with the input resistor as you said?). As soon as I made a darlington and put that in this thing has come to life!

The input cap has a important role.
10uF is huge and will give you this fat fuzz tone
100nF and lower will give you more an "overdrive" sound.

Chris_V said:

The input cap has a important role.
10uF is huge and will give you this fat fuzz tone
100nF and lower will give you more an "overdrive" sound.

Click to expand...

hey sorry I am using 0.47uf on the input and 0.1uf on the output

i think somewiring might have gone a bit wrong as its sounding completely filthy beyond a normal fuzz pedal ?

It sound like it's working as it should now.

Disease8 said:

i think somewiring might have gone a bit wrong as its sounding completely filthy beyond a normal fuzz pedal ?

Click to expand...

Turn down your guitar volume.

Put a 250K volume control at the input of the pedal.

Introduce emitter degeneration.

Reduce the bandwidth of the input signal.

Make sure you aren't clipping your amplifier by feeding it the full output of a 9V circuit.

Add impedance in series with the diode to reduce clipping.

Since your darlington is discrete, there are also ways to reduce the gain multiplication factor of the pair but that's probably needlessly esoteric.

I'm going to reiterrate my last post to use a breadboard if you want to experiment. You're just going to break components desoldering and resoldering a mess of point to point.

abbey road d enfer said:

http://home-wrecker.com/bazz.html

Click to expand...

See how the collector resistor has gone up from 10k to 100k!
[/quote]

The 10K is for the darlington version; the 100K is the original's value with a 2N5088. The Darlington version is worlds better in any case for guitar. the 2N5088 version has some weird problems with some parts of the fretboard and sounds buzzier. The darlington is smoother even when the gain is lowered to comparable levels. I'm not sure exactly why. A bass doesn't care as much.

midwayfair said:

It sound like it's working as it should now.

Disease8 said:

i think somewiring might have gone a bit wrong as its sounding completely filthy beyond a normal fuzz pedal ?

Click to expand...

Turn down your guitar volume.

Put a 250K volume control at the input of the pedal.

Introduce emitter degeneration.

Reduce the bandwidth of the input signal.

Make sure you aren't clipping your amplifier by feeding it the full output of a 9V circuit.

Add impedance in series with the diode to reduce clipping.

Since your darlington is discrete, there are also ways to reduce the gain multiplication factor of the pair but that's probably needlessly esoteric.

I'm going to reiterrate my last post to use a breadboard if you want to experiment. You're just going to break components desoldering and resoldering a mess of point to point.

abbey road d enfer said:

http://home-wrecker.com/bazz.html

Click to expand...

See how the collector resistor has gone up from 10k to 100k!

Click to expand...

The 10K is for the darlington version; the 100K is the original's value with a 2N5088. The Darlington version is worlds better in any case for guitar. the 2N5088 version has some weird problems with some parts of the fretboard and sounds buzzier. The darlington is smoother even when the gain is lowered to comparable levels. I'm not sure exactly why. A bass doesn't care as much.
[/quote]

Hi thanks I am not going to tamper with this one much more as you say I am slowly ruining the perfboard and components constantly changing things around. I am mounting it into an old plastic box I had lying around. May add a potentiometer or two and foot pedal may just leave it as its disgusting in its own right, I see what you mean though if I put one pot at the start and one at the end that would be a good configuration? Then maybe one to control tone somehow?. Is the loss of the high notes because of impedance problems?  It is just the highest string it lacks the sustain and decay of the other notes. It was worse before but smoothed out since using the darlington.

thanks for the message unfortunately I do not understand or know how to do a lot of what you said but I will try and look into it. I ordered some of the fairchilds so will have plenty of transistors to play with, I do like the sound from the two s9014's in darlington configuration. Don't want to loose it.

where abouts would I put an LED for a little light action (just to symbolize there is power going through the circuit?)

inside the FUzzz as I like to call it lol


more sounds from it:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bx9FzoUcSTTrakhJa3R6ZzhqVlU/view?usp=sharing

Here is a cheesy song i through together with it.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bx9FzoUcSTTrcDFqT1B4aTEyeTg/view?usp=sharing
There is a nasty high end raspiness that I EQ'd out was around 10khz-15khz.. would be nice if it was slightly more refined..

midwayfair said:

That's pretty much exactly what the buzz box does. You can stick a booster in front of it, too.

This circuit sounds FAR better with a darlington like the MPSA13, though.

One of Paul's other videos has a transistor comparison between the 5088 and MPSA13. If yours doesn't sound like this then something might be wrong.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0PDQ6zMU4g

If you think something's wrong, measure your voltages and recheck all your connections.

Click to expand...

WOW the MPSA13 sound really good in this circuit!

got some on the way so will post my results asap. I built my own darlington transistor but it has a  very particular sound as you have heard... darlington transistor
https://www.google.co.uk/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=darlington%20transistor

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bx9FzoUcSTTrcDFqT1B4aTEyeTg/view

Disease8 said:

There is a nasty high end raspiness that I EQ'd out was around 10khz-15khz.. would be nice if it was slightly more refined..

Click to expand...

Well, I disagree in general with trying to make just the Bazz Fuss more refined ... I mean, the entire point is the primitive nature of the circuit. But anyway. If you want more sophisticated you need to add stuff, and if you're going to add stuff you might as well add a few stuffs.

So, this thing right here, the Whisker Biscuit:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hbBRWBJDlhs

As far as hooking up an LED, without trying to be snarky, just google it.

yeah ok just after the points people have been making i thought there was room for improvement I think with the fairchild things will improve even more. I do love the sounds of my home made darlington its like some strange fucked up deamon fart synth.