Miss Piggy with BC109B

[lvs]

Hello everybody,

Here's a small er, report on breadboarding the Miss Piggy following Brett's schematic and using 4 x BC109B.

I made a mistake first sticking the transistors close together... so their metal bodies touched and that way the collectors make contact... lesson #1. It was deceiving because it worked, be it with low output.

So I rearranged the layout and it got louder. I couldn't get Q1 bias down to 1V2 : got stuck at 1V45 with 122K collector resistance and fiddling with resistances didn't lower the bias anymore.

Yesterday evening I drove it into a Boss GT-5 and interestingly, only when I activated the amp simulators it sounded like a fuzz.

This morning I plugged it into a clean Deville and got nice, guitar volume responsive fuzz. Backing off a bit, I could get a Green Manalishi sound from the bridge pickup.

I'm gonna try to get some BC547 and PN100 to compare. I also have a more traditional FF in mind using germanium from a defunkt Uher tape recorder.

This is the second guitar effect I'm building (the first one was an Elektor hi boost some years ago which made me decide to learn a bit about electronics). Next will be the Highway : thanks Doug for sending me the schematic. And thanks to everyone, for making this forum so much worth visiting.

luc