What devices would contain good stomp box ge trannies?  Besides the obvious old fuzz faces, etc.  are there other old eletronics I might find at goodwill or somewhere that would contain these transistors?

They used these divices for other purposes, I shudder to think how many are in landfills.

The small portable or small table top radios till early 70' should have them.
I got a few that way and as a matter of fact I just finished a fuzz last week and used up my last three,no matching or anything and sounded killer from the get go.
They were Sanyos.
Aharon

I just bought a pretty successfull batch from http://www.newark.com.  I purchased 30 trannies and was able to make 10 good matches for fuzz faces.  It's a good source for us Americans since they keep a lot of stock in Ohio.

Agreed.  As well you may find useful transistors in old transistor radios, american or western european made I think would be most desireable, but asian made will also have germaniums.  Sometimes you can find a lot of transistors on Ebay.  A lot of people aren't as fond of that route as I, but I bought a lot of 100 old germaniums a while back and have tested about a quarter of them and all have a gain of around 90 so far, save four or five which are more or less, mostly far less.

I frequent flea markets and swap meets, and sometimes it's hard not to just buy every old electronic audio gadget I see, but I always have to remind myself that if I suspect an old radio will have 5 transistors (sometimes it says right on the radio how many there are) I will be lucky if they are even appropriate for fuzzes and such, not to mention that if they are, they may be poor functioning.  I always have to do the money math in my head to make sure I am paying an appropriate price.  In my opinion, my best bet to save time and money in the long run is to buy pre-matched or pre-tested components from a reputable dealer such as steve from small bear.

I am always hoping to find a nugget of gold, so even though it isn't probable I still go out and look.

Maybe I'm a pessimist...Just my opinion...  :wink:

Good luck, Matt.

I looked inside an early solid-state Philips suitcase reel-to-reel unit, and saw a few "black bullets", as well as a handful of mustard caps... but I didn't buy it and gut it because the shop owner says it still works fine.  If you find one that's otherwise toast, by all means do save the components from that landfill!

I had an old Phillips recorder with transistor pre's...didn't look inside.
 Had speakers on the side and an amp for playback...'worked'...'ok' I guess...not exactly the 'high end' recording device...kinda bulky, slow etc...the digital stuff you can get these days 'blows these old units off to the dump I suspect in many cases...
 Mine was 'old' old, ... ok ... just funky enough that I would hardly ever get it out to even test it....probably didn't have that great of specs when it was new.

kinda makes you wonder why no-one starts a mass production line of ge transistors, theyd make a killing off stompbox builders in search of that old fuzz face sound

BTW while you guys are on this subject do any of you know a godd UK supplier of ge trannies/diodes?

Quote from: lightningfingerskinda makes you wonder why no-one starts a mass production line of ge transistors, theyd make a killing off stompbox builders in search of that old fuzz face sound

There are companies that make production Ges but they are expensive especially when after testing and sorting occurs you are throwing out a good portion of those transistors. Taking a look at the fuzz face/trim pot thread where Dunlop is now adding a bunch of adjustments to make use of a wider range of production transistors that they buy. Its looks like the added cost of more parts is less they the cost they spend on rejected devices.

Andrew