Animato Fuzz Sounds Weak & Dual-Pot Pin Outs?

[steveyraff]

Hey dudes,

I'm making my second Animato Bass Fuzz clone with a clean blend. Its quite a busy build, but for some reason, the first one I built just magically worked when I first fired it up. I say magically, because there were a few things I was unsure about. Guess I got lucky.

I built a second one today. I guess its so long since the first, I was equally as unsure about a few things. Like the first, I used genuine NTE102 and NTE103A's. Expensive and hard to find, but I was trying to 'keep it real'. I heard they are leaky and stuff so maybe that was a bad idea.

Or maybe I did something weird with the Distortion controls Dual Gang Pot. I never really wired one of those up before.

Whatever I've done, it works - but it sounds weak and a noisier than I remember. It sounds pretty much clean until the Distortion control is all the way up to say half ways, then it sounds very watery and weak and only really sounds half-decent up full.

From what I'd read somewhere, I thought looking at the back flat-side of the pot, with pins facing toward you, the bottom row is 3-2-1, and the top row is 6-5-4. Is this correct?

I kinda wish it either just did work, or didn't at all. It seems harder to figure out now that its sorta half working. Worked at it all day today so...no, I haven't double checked all my resistor values - but I am certain my caps are all correct as I already had to double check them (once ordering them all, second while soldering them in).

Anyway, its the Animato, with a Split N Blend control.




I'll start troubleshooting tomorrow - just hoping some of you more experienced folk can lead me in the right direction, where to start looking, based upon the sound of my issue.

Cheers,
Stevey.

[steveyraff]

Any pointers - or even any advice maybe on if I wired the Dual Gang Pot correctly?

Thanks guys!

[EBK]

Sounds correct (regarding the pot, anyway).  The rows of a dual gang pot are identical and, thus, interchangeable.
Your problem lies elsewhere, it seems.  Post some pics of your work, if you can.  I like to (help) debug visually.

[Kipper4]

Double check your pot wirings.
Check for poor/dry joints  bridges. Did you check your R and C values too.
post up the schematic.
Tell us what transistors you used in this one also and any relevant data sheets (for all the transistors you have used in either build)
Some pictures might help also.

Maybe consider an audio probe test too.

Does it sound watery without the blender?

[Kipper4]

The underwater sound is probably too much bass freqauncies.

[steveyraff]

Thanks all. For anyone following this, switching out a different nte103 seemed to solve it!.

Cheers.