ancient prophet boost/od/dist/fuzz

[bluesdevil]

I LOVE IT!!
Man, just when I thought I built every fuzz I would ever need along comes this one.
Will have to dig through my germs for some bad ones (never thought I would say that).
Thanks for sharing, Jimi!!

[rutabaga bob]

Another nice job, my friend!   

[pinkjimiphoton]

i'm playing a benefit next weekend with my old hard rock band aftershock. it's been 20 years, so i went to jam with them tonite.

i plugged this thing in to my usual amp at stage volumes tonite and tried it with my les paul.

wait'll you try this thing. it IS a little hissy, but not as bad as the other guitarist's jcm 900. if can get a HUGE metal tone, too.
turn it down, and it cleans up real nice. sick compression, ridiculous sustain, crushing huge wall of guitar sound.

they loved it.

[pinkjimiphoton]

tried making an npn version of this, but it doesn't work right, or all the npn ge's i have don't leak enough or something.
pnp's work. go figure.

found i could dial out almost all the noise at the expense of some gain. if you don't mind the hiss, you can dial in some SERIOUS balls with this.

if ya want it cleaner, you'll probably find ya need the extremes of your trimmer.

[bluesdevil]

Finally got this one breadboarded up and was assaulted by an absolute fuzz monster!!
Didn't have any really leaky low gain germs on hand, but I had some Japanese 2sa101's in the 40-60 range that worked out fine and without hiss.
Definitely don't need to blast the fuzz knob on this one.... I like it around 1/4 to halfway up. Anything more I get too much compressed ducking/swelling.
A bigger input cap will get you a more massive fuzz, but you'll get the the compressed ducking effect sooner on the fuzz knob. I really liked a .01uf cap paralleled with the .0047uf (on a switch) for a nice tonal variety.
I could get sixties buzzy Fuzz-Rite kinda tones, Neil Young/Crazy Horse amp melting sag and fat stoner doom (with a .022uf cap parallel with .0047uf input). Might go with 3-way input cap toggle switch for this one.
Almost get a biting, filtered %^&*ed wah tone with the .0047uf input cap.
    Almost reminds me of the Os Mutantes fuzz I built up last year, but this one smokes it!! This one's getting boxed.... great stuff Jimi, thanks!!

[col]

I've not built anything for a while as I'm not in a band anymore but this looks interesting. I have a bag of 'red spot' pnp germaniums somewhere that should be ideal for this if I can find some that don't hiss too much!
Thanks for the post
Col

[pinkjimiphoton]

Finally got this one breadboarded up and was assaulted by an absolute fuzz monster!!
Didn't have any really leaky low gain germs on hand, but I had some Japanese 2sa101's in the 40-60 range that worked out fine and without hiss.
Definitely don't need to blast the fuzz knob on this one.... I like it around 1/4 to halfway up. Anything more I get too much compressed ducking/swelling.
A bigger input cap will get you a more massive fuzz, but you'll get the the compressed ducking effect sooner on the fuzz knob. I really liked a .01uf cap paralleled with the .0047uf (on a switch) for a nice tonal variety.
I could get sixties buzzy Fuzz-Rite kinda tones, Neil Young/Crazy Horse amp melting sag and fat stoner doom (with a .022uf cap parallel with .0047uf input). Might go with 3-way input cap toggle switch for this one.
Almost get a biting, filtered %^&*ed wah tone with the .0047uf input cap.
    Almost reminds me of the Os Mutantes fuzz I built up last year, but this one smokes it!! This one's getting boxed.... great stuff Jimi, thanks!!

right on, glad ya diggit!! people are like, "sure, pink, ANOTHER fuzz.. big deal"...

until they TRY it. even the metal guys seem to like this one.

it will sound different with silicon, even more aggressive. it's cuz basically you got the transistor all the way up, and whatever you put into the base comes out the collector amplified by the gain of the transistor as near as i can tell.

if you need a source for leaky cheap germanium, pm me.

[bluesdevil]

The germs I used weren't too leaky (93 to 123 micro amps). I might've got lucky, but you can probably get away with any germanium transistor in the suggested gain buckets, even lower leakage ones.
I like what I threw in there first shot, but I'll try some even lower gain ones next..... got three 20 hfe NPN Russian germs staring at me as I type!

[pinkjimiphoton]

i tried doing an npn one with transistors i knew were good and i couldn't get it to work righht, but i'm psyched you dig it.

[bluesdevil]

Hey Jimi - Man, I didn't have any luck with the low gain NPN's either.... also no luck with some 50 hfe gain PNP Russians I had hanging around. Like you said, leakage does have a hand in getting it to work.
I think those Jap 2sa101 germs I used just had enough leakage to get it going.... I'm going to settle with those and call it a day.
    I have to admit I've slowed down quite a bit on my tinkering as of late, but you always seem to pull something out to get me fired up again!! Hats off to ya!
                                     

[pinkjimiphoton]

thanks bill, hats off to you man!! rock on!!

[tubegeek]

amp melting sag and fat stoner doom

Poetry!

[bluesdevil]

amp melting sag and fat stoner doom

Poetry!

Hey anybody want to hire an ad copy man? 

[BetterOffShred]

Necro bump from the past .. sorry.

Does anyone have schematics or layouts for this anymore? Photobitch seems to have eaten these too.  I looked around but couldn't find anything.. 

I have piles of leaky PNP's that could find a happy life in this device.  let me know.  Sorry again for the necro bump. 

[Kipper4]

You could try paging Jimi.

[pinkjimiphoton]

Necro bump from the past .. sorry.

Does anyone have schematics or layouts for this anymore? Photobitch seems to have eaten these too.  I looked around but couldn't find anything.. 

I have piles of leaky PNP's that could find a happy life in this device.  let me know.  Sorry again for the necro bump.

hey hey, as soon as i get on my other pc i'll upload it all for ya. stay tuned!

[BetterOffShred]

Sweet man! I watched the video and it sounds like something right up my alley.. plus I have so many leftover PNP's that didn't make the cut in other devices. thanks again!

[pinkjimiphoton]

there ya go, have fun!

[BetterOffShred]

Huzzah! Fuzz for all!!

[pinkjimiphoton]

Huzzah! Fuzz for all!!

lemme know how it works out for ya bro!

i may have to update this  circuit, i sold the ones i built and as i recall this thing sounds pretty badass