Fuzz pedal info

[Manni]

Hi all, I'm very new to fuzz pedals and havent bought one yet, however the fuzz pedal kits on eBay look awesome plus they're cheap, anyway Q1) how would I increase the "grittiness" of the pedal (I was interested in the OBNE haunt fuzz which is amazing but out of my budget) as in what components would help me change this aspect?

Q2) are there any pedals out there to the afore mentioned haunt fuzz pedal but <£100?

Q3) Would you recommend the kit, or does it ave any major downfalls?

many thanks, Manni

[bluesmann]

You can probably find one of these for cheeps. It sounds great with a wah in front too.

[1001gear]

Mooer makes 4 different ones $50 apiece. Donner makes at least one for 30.

[t_e_l_e]

from just 2 minutes of the 20 minutes video at there homepage it sounds like a super fuzz like pedal, so if you get a kit of that kind you maybe can mod it for extra gate etc....

 

i guess it helps if you know what you are doing, otherwise you will end up with a non working modded kit instead of a nice pedal

 

if budget is a limit, have look around what other pedals are there which might sound similar, there are literaly thousands of pedals there are tons in the <100pounds range as some above have suggested

[WRGKMC]

how would I increase the "grittiness" of the pedal (I was interested in the OBNE haunt fuzz which is amazing but out of my budget) as in what components would help me change this aspect?

 

Without seeing the schematic and having heard the pedal I have no idea what would need to be done. (Neither would anyone else)

 

I can give you some general information. There are several different types of fuzz pedals. Some are two transistor designs like the Fuzz face. Others are three transistor designs like many MKII type pedals. Some are 4 transistor designs like the Big Muff.

 

Which might be better, more or less gritty, that's purely a matter of matching your guitar pickup to one of them and personal taste. As an electronic tech I have no idea of what a person means when they say something is gritty. Its not a scientific term and in electronics its all about being highly specific, no guesswork involved at all. What one person means by gritty might mean an overly dynamic breakup. What another might means is all drive and no clean tone mixed in. Another it might be the frequency response and another how flattened the waveform is.

 

You'd need to post an example others could hear then be highly specific.

 

Overdrive and Fuzz pedals are older the distortion pedals. They consist of nothing more then a bunch of preamps in series. Instead of the signal being 1:1 which would keep the signals clean, they instead drive the first gain stage at a higher level then the second stage can handle so the signal clips.

 

The transistors are what do the clipping as the signal becomes to great for the next stage to handle. This is different then many overdrive circuits that use a diode to flatten the sine waves. Fuzz pedals typically tend to be highly dynamic. The harder you pick a string the more the gain stages clip.

 

Next you have the differences between Silicone and Germanium transistors. Besides the different voltage levels and threshold levels of the two materials, Silicone typically has stronger barriers between the N & P materials. Silicone can take greater current levels and not break down and works much better with less noise then Germanium. Its also superior when it comes to temp changes and durability which is why there are so many more silicone transistors out there.

 

Guitar pedals are one of those exception where all the rules are bass ackwards. Electric guitar is often about bad being good and good being bad. A Low Fi transistor being abused can translate to something an artist likes because its being contrasted against a clean sound and its the two that come together, the clean and the overdriven that give a song its contrast.

 

Many of your older Fuzz pedals got their tones by using Germanium transistors AND having their circuits modified to get the most from those transistors. Typically what you'd do as a technicians is test the transistors using a load line analysis tool and an oscilloscope to test exactly where the transistors begin to break down, then you'd modify the circuit to do just that.

 

This isn't Plug and play. no one can tell you, change this resistor, cap, or transistor and you magically get the sound you want. Nobody is going to know what those transistors need without the proper tools to test them. You need the electronic test gear and the education to use them and that's something you unfortunately wont have unless you go to college and spend the money to get a degree in electronics.

 

Even if you had someone walking you through the process there is no way you could use it creatively on your own to make the kind of modifications you're wanting to do. Slap a kit together? Sure, that's like painting by numbers. Look at the diagram and solder the part in place. It takes zero brain power if the diagrams are well documented. You want to modify it beyond that, you need an education is basic electronics and the test equipment which will allow you to see what the mods will do.

 

Maybe if you had an electronics design CAD program. You could plug in the component values and see what the circuit does, then vary the components to see how it changes the results. Not much good if you cant actually hear the differences however. Seeing what an ideal circuit is supposed to do under ideal circumstances and using real components that have flawed values are a whole different ball game.

 

If you had the education and hands on experience what you'd do is use devices called decade boxes. They are boxes with switches which let you select different component values. Instead of using mathematics to swap a fixed resistor or capacitor, you'd wire this box in place of those components. Then you can vary the components value up and down, much like you would tweaking a pot till you find the ideal sound you want. Then you simply read the switch settings and insert a resistor or cap in the circuit with those same values and hope you don't wind up blowing up the circuit is that component is too far off from its original design value.

 

If that component was a bias resistor that supplied voltage to make a transistor operate, that transistor might sound excellent when its fed more voltage. Problem is you put more current through the N/P junctions and it causes heat. Heat is the enemy of electronics. The device may run for an hour, day week month then it shorts or opens up and goes dead.

 

Again, circuits are a balancing act, you add something in one place, you have to balance things out in another place or you have a problem. you can sometimes tweak things if components aren't near their limits but if they are pushed past their limits already like drive/fuzz pedals are being made to do so, how much farther can you abuse them before they simply burn out. Its like pushing a light bulb to be brighter. The filament might take the stress, it might be burning as bright as it can be already. How would you know without understanding how to read component specs then using math to determine how much farther you can push them and not burn them out?

 

There are dozens upon dozens of different Fuzz circuits. A lot of the kits on EBay are generic copies of popular circuits. Many of the ones I've seen are two transistor Fuzz Face designs. If you're looking for a Jimi Hendrix sound they might do the job. Other designs can be pretty awful. I've built several and there isn't allot you can do with the circuits because the transistors aren't any good.

[catscurlyear]

that pedal sounds realy good .