Fuzz face sound disappears at last 10%

Started by Filip_Mikuz, December 28, 2015, 11:10:51 AM

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Gus

#20
Have you paid attention to my first post and PRRs? 

LAYOUT is most likely what is wrong

4.5VDC is sometime correct

You can have problems with batteries

Is it in a metal enclosure?
How long are the wires?
How are the wires run?
Did you build it from a known good tagboard, perfboard or PCB layout?

Filip_Mikuz

#21
yes tone changes as i turn guitar nobs




Gus

#22
From the pictures showing the test leads and lengths of copper wires and the board being out of the enclosure.  The wire lengths look to be the issue.
I would GUESS if you install it in the enclosure and make the wire runs short you might have a working effect.



anotherjim

Yikes! That set-up is asking for trouble. Your wires are long and probably picking up everything in the ether - radio, lighting, soldering iron... as well as it's own output. You'd get away with that for something simple like a treble booster, but not a high gain distortion/fuzz.

I can see at least 4 track cuts in that stripboard layout -  I can't clearly see them on your board  - are they all there?

Keep those wire's short. Use screened audio cable to make some croc-clip to 1/4" jack plug adapters so you can keep the audio connections screened as far as possible. Pots need to be close to the pcb when testing - even if you've got to unsolder them again to fit it in the box. You don't need to have the Footswitch involved until you've proved your circuit - not if it means having a lot of unscreened wires all over the bench.

You're nearly there, so clean up that wiring and get back to it!


karbomusic

#24
You desperately need a breadboard. ;) And, I'd keep the entire enclosure out of the picture. I'd also wire the pots as part of the build with short insulated wires because I agree with Jim on the huge antenna you are dealing with above.

GibsonGM

All of the above.  Can't say one way or another what is going on, because you have antennae all over the place ;)  Might not have ANY problems!

Keep 'em short, keep 'em shielded, see what you get...
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Ben Lyman

Ya, it'll probably work fine once you get rid of the extra antennae and seal it up in aluminum.
Also, I thought I saw you might have a little extra unwanted bridge, so check and double check for that kinda stuff.
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lethargytartare

Is that a solder bridge between the ground strip, 3rd hole (cap lead) that jumps down to the bottom-most strip?  Looks like that is grounding the three bottom strips of the board (bottom two completely  and the third up to the cut).  (in Ben's pic, 3 holes right and 1 hole down from top left).

The approach I use for cutting traces is to have a drill bit handy and set it in a hole where the cut should be and spin it by hand until the copper is gone in a wide enough circle to cut the strip completely.  Hard to accidentally bridge it, very visible, etc.

Filip_Mikuz

i shortened some wires and sealed it up AND the problem is still there. Dont worry about the solder joints they are not actually touching. it looks that way because the wire of the cap was at an angle and from that perspective it looks as if its touching.

pinkjimiphoton

first, i'd check your grounds. all of them. make sure they are solid. check all soldering nodes for cold solder, may pay to reflow the entire board.
but to me? sounds like you have really high gain transistors in there and they aren't biased correctly. 4.5v is a total myth. i've seen this happen with transistors that were misbiased many times.
make the connections to the gain pot as short as possible with stranded, not solid wire.
do not twist the wires together if you have done so undo it, less capacitance action that way.
i'd suspect the snubber cap you soldered in, but it sounds to me like the bias needs to be adjusted... there's two parts of that in a FF, the trimmer if used feeding the collector, and the fuzz pot itself.
also, make sure ya didn't use a 5k or 10k fuzz pot, cuz that could do it too.
make sure ALL THE POT CASES ARE GROUNDED TOO or it can squeal like a pig.
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