Russian PNP's ace

[petemoore]

  Marty Mart [thank you Vmuch!] sent me a care package with also a bagful of russian PNP's.
  Yesterday I got to re-trying them, found the E-C-B pinout in my DMM's hfe checker...
  Soon my tonebender was A1 sounding, [I'd exhausted my PNP ge stashes and couldn't find a suitable Q1 for my tonebender [very picky position IME], until I tried the first russian PNP...said 79 in the meter window], I popped that ruskie in Q1 and the TB now works Ace, no more gating or lack of gain.
  So this is about the usableness of these transistors...purportedly there are stashes of them up on E-bay, for anyone interested.
  Collector's in the middle, they're ace Ge's...

[remmelt]

Would something like that do well in a Fuzz Face type fuzz?
Should I just search for "russian pnp"?

[petemoore]

  The ones I tested with my hfe only DMM meter looked to be nice choices gain wise, marty mart has done some testing...good bets I think, you'll of course have to sort them out.
  Of course that was 'this' batch...who knows.

[jrc4558]

Glad to hear about your success! What's the part number of these transistors?

[Cardboard Tube Samurai]

Yeah great! You got a pic of these bad-boys, or at least a description? I got some off eBay but they are completely unmarked (in English anyway!). They are black, round, and have like a bola hat top on them with a diamond at the top. Legs are really long too

[petemoore]

  quick post, Ill try for a pic after a time...
  PNP, this one Says:
  [upside down L, then 3088, VII,72
  Looks like nickel or aluminum color, derby hat rim 3/4'' of the way down the fat round body, long legs.
 

[soulsonic]

The "Upside-Down L" is a "G".

[$uperpuma]

I have some of the 313's.. 4 leggers but no idea what the 4th leg is for. data sheet says "Kopnyc"

[soulsonic]

"Kopnyc" = Korpoos = Corpus = Body = The outer metal shell!
I'm a fan of the 313s.

[petemoore]

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v207/petemoore/000_0810.jpg
  Ya know, hand selecting from batches...no way of really knowing.
 

[goosonique]

Dano will be here soon to add to the mojo 

[Cardboard Tube Samurai]

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v207/petemoore/000_0810.jpg
  Ya know, hand selecting from batches...no way of really knowing.
 

Cheers Pete, they look much like the ones I have, but mine are black. Apparently mine are old new-stock from 1981. Really have to get off my arse and put some of them in pedals!

[MartyMart]

They're GT308B's and are some of the best sounding and lowest leakage PNP's that I have !
Still come up on ebay fairly regularly.
The much smaller 309's look like tiny UFO's and are also generally superb.
Glad that you're enjoying them Pete and happy to help out after your little basement disaster

MM.

[petemoore]

  Actually I was relying only on the reviews [including MM's] and with my limited experience with these, the results look consistant with what others have found, very good.
  Not to say what is found will be consistant, if ge historty has any bearing on Ge 'value finds...hit and a lot of miss has been the story.
  I guess what I'm saying is that these work good, so there's a chance more are worth checking out.

[$uperpuma]

Dano will be here soon to add to the mojo 

"Kopnyc" = Korpoos = Corpus = Body = The outer metal shell!
I'm a fan of the 313s.

Yeah I like them too. I have the GT313's and KT312's. Do I need to do anything with the body leg?  I haven't even had a chance to mess with them.

[soulsonic]

I usually attach it to ground - hoping that it may act as a shield. It doesn't hurt it as far as I can tell, so I guess yeah, just put it to ground.

[petemoore]

Would something like that do well in a Fuzz Face type fuzz?
  I grabbed some from the Hfe sheet [hfe test only, they all seem low leakage], ranging from 60hfe - 90 hfe, 9 of them IIRC, and got a 79 / 89 for q1/Q2, a very respectable neighborhood.
  This FF is super, smooth, Fuzzy, has better guitar cleanup and generally 'outraced' my 'OCxx' FF.