Hi there,
How the Fuzz 1711 and Fuzz 109 and many more in the research differ:
Actually they do a whole lot and I was going to make a few Fuzz109’s but the bag of BC109C’s ( very low noise, high gain, low voltage audio transistor for preamps et.c) I had had disappeared so as I anyway wanted to complete what I had started I checked out some other transistors I had in drawers and thought of trying 2N1711 ( medium power,medium gain switching- and driver-transistor) and those have about as much as common that they both are NPN and in metal can…
The circuit had to be revised to let the 2N1711 bias correctly for what I wanted and also while you can do certain noise reduction things with transistors those vary from type to type and as an example one that makes 2N1711 drop a little noise makes the F109 oscillate
I am saying when you use a part there can certain things you can do.
Sound wise and on musical level things could be broken down like this
The Square Wave is a resurrection with some modifications to a fuzz I used a whole lot live and in studios in the late 1980’s- it can sound almost behaved with volume control on guitar turned down a little and then sound like a disaster when volume control is on full- I always enjoyed having that on dial
The Fuzz 109 came about as I was building fuzzes and listening to Hendrix for hours on end and as I was making the Sparkle Faces it struck me that while close there would be something else I’d hear in the Hendrix fuzz sounds and there’s these sounds where he gets a fuzz sound that more sounds like a distorting amplifier in that more organic for lack of better word than distortion boxes and this would be a sound I have wanted to have since I first heard it. So I set about making the Fuzz 109 using silicon transistors as it struck me that the recordings I was listening to would have been made with the latest most likely of fuzz faces.
Now there are some high order distortions that occour in the BC109C that is not present in say the 2N1308’s and I recalled some techniques to reduce that and in the process total noise level and I feel the resulting sound and behavior makes something useful to me and a sound I could use any day.
This is about sounds that woke my desire to play guitar and that have lingered through the years- I could think of sounds of disaster but this is not it this time.
The Sparkle Face I wanted to make with more modern germanium transistors and for a close to linear design that would eventually overload and in that making a sound from seemingly clean to heavy fuzz and doing that gradually- there are of course some interesting ’odd' things that would then be dialed out, such that would be viewed as the sound of fuzz and that make sound gate and spit and duck- while I in later years enjoy such things too I could think of circuits to more fully explore the noises.
When I first saw fuzzes and first played some fuzzes back in the late 70’s I found most of them limiting to the sounds I wanted and that I had heard on recordings and frankly many of the amps back then also had a less inspiring distortion and these great sounds I could hear were only for the stars - such were the times.
Therefore when making the Tone bender Mark 1 there was something specific I wanted control over in terms of how it plays and thusly it would not sound totally ’vintage’ but have a sound that one out of one hundred fuzzes could have had in a music store in 1966.
Instructions and schematic on that coming soon and for the Bone Benders made for this research I used either AC127 or NTE103A.
This said I can see many shades of fuzz tones and so I also wanted to try the Tone bender Mark II and really that is a circuit similar to a fuzz face albeit with a preamp and it is capable of tremendous sustain- and while making that I was thing about when my mother in law was sent out by my eldest brother in law to find a fuzz wha one with a long tone
The Bone Bender mark II also uses AC127 or NTE103A.
Some of these have heavy leakage and some less so I sorted those that had high leakage to be used as first stage and thus those bias at about 3V8 to 4V7
right in the middle of making a nice linear amplifier that will saturate symmetrically. Those with lower leakage I used for the composite current input amplifier that follows the input stage and allow biasing with a trimmer.
A musician’s approach to biasing fuzz pedals
Here’s how I’d set up the bias for any of the above fuzz pedals ( except Square wave)
Set a gutar amplifier up for about 1/4WW to 1 W and hook up the fuzz pedal and connect an electric guitar ( I’d usually use a Telecaster- something single coil is a little easier to work with ) with volume on full.
Then listen to hum as produced through the amp and adjust trimmer for loudest hum and then turn down volume control on guitar slightly and listen and adjust if necessary to make hum gradually go up and down while turning the volume control on guitar.
The hum that is caused by guitar picking up magnetic fields makes for a test signal that can be used to set up performance of the fuzz.
Note how sound changes if bias is slightly of and cutting out sound…
At your service
BJ
