~ Finale Gallery ~ (Finished Builds)

[Sweet T]

Anyone got a comparison of Ge vs Si?

[JKoeth]

SI on the left and Germ on the right. I'll add my .02 in the other thread later. They sound great!

[Donner]

Cool I like the industrial look !!!
yup let us know how they compare sonically ....

[BJF]

I haven't seriously investigated but I dont believe 5mm LEDs sound different from 3mm leds. Color may make a difference because of changes in voltage but the size is mostly a hardware-type change.

This is something I wrote on another forum in regards to LED's used as clippers and it was about the mojolevel and if you can hear the grass grow......
Hi,

Well, no manufacturer of LED's define the knee, at best forward voltage appears as a blur at the beginning of the curve, which just happens to be the region of interest in this application. It would typically suffice to state typical turn on voltage as current through the LED is far more important for LED brightness and so LED manufacturers might state a current versus brightness graph, and voltage is just assumed to be nominal.
There was in the late 70's early 80's a popular thing to use e.g red LED's as voltage reference in poweramplifiers and the a red LED was assumed to have a turn on voltage of 1V7.............
However I asked my local submarine engineer to draw a graph of dynamic resistans range of 300 pieces of 3mm red LED's from the same manufacturer and the graph looked similar to the input caracterics graph of a triode. About 30 pieces could be matched outof the 300 units tested. Different makes of 3mm red LED*s can be had with a turn on voltage ranging from 1V5 to 2V0....Low current types will show a more gradual turn on than higher current types. In the application the LED's would be used as dynamic resistanses and that parallelled with a resistor, the value of which also will have an effect. There is further a parallell capacitance over the LED's and neither that is defined from any manufacturer......It is possible to match one 5mm LED with one 3mm LED if they are of the same type, which could falsy lead to that there is no difference between what type of red LED is used in this particurlar application..........truer would be that the more interesting for the application it would to have consistency, the more LED's should be viewed as individuals.
From a sound and dynamic behaviour point of view as would be interesting to a musician how audiable the difference of the exact type of red LED's used would be may also depend on wether you just strike down hard or employ dynamics of playing........

Now as for other colours of LED's, things would be similar but different. There was a time when yellow and green LED's where considered equal in typical use as in forward voltage approximately 2V0 - but actual range is more like 1V8 to 2V2, and this is not a typical use, so agian LED's used would be best viewed as individuals, while it is possible to match one yellow LED to one green LED...............


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7oUwPIWCYI

Gentlemen have fun
BJ

[BJF]

Hi,

A question I think many would like answered is what difference does it make if you use silicon or gremanium or a composition of those as transistors in this circuit.

Silicon versus germanium can perhaps be answered here by those who built both.

I'd also like to say what nice pedals you all have built!

Gentlemen have fun
BJ

[BMF Effects]

Finally built out my Folk Fuzz today. I didn't get long to play around with it but here's what I emailed someone regarding my first impressions...

"I played around with the Folk Fuzz some more and it reminds me very much of a small Fender tweed being pushed hard. It doesn’t sound like a Big Muff or Fuzz Face but comes very close to what I remember hearing when I used to dime tweed Harvards and Princetons back at Black Market Music…that combination of tube and speaker break up."

Looking forward to playing it some more and trying different things as I still have three more boards. Thanks to everyone who pulled this together.

[mills]

I only had them on breadboard, but I tried a bunch of different Si transistors, a couple Ge's, and a couple combinations.

I found bigger differences between different sillicon transistors than the Ge an Si's I tried. I thought that the circuit always had a simillar character with the 2n2219s, and both the germaniums I tried (jfromel's NPN's and some PNP's from smallbear).

With jfromel's NPN Ge's, and I thought the circuit was a little more open in the mids, and maybe a little bit darker. Just a little closer to that "natural", responsive fuzz that I always want. Not a huge difference, and I really liked the 2n2219's too... I might be more inclined to mess around with the bias or just try those in a fuzzface/tonebender for something a little spittier... I thought they'd sound good there.

I thought the PNP Ge's were a little darker, and not quite as fuzzy. But they had a lower hfe, so thats probably expected. They seemed to have the biggest difference with an Si into a Ge transistor. Got a little more gain, and a bit brighter with it. I think I prefered the Si into Ge with those particular transistors.

And, with the silicon transistors, I LOVED the 2n2222's I tried (for the bass here). They were pretty dark, and had tonnes of lows. Nice pillowy low mids, instead of that farty distorted bass sound that one ends up with so much of the time. Lower gain and almost overdrivey... Not really punchy, but that's why we have more than one pedal. I meant to try a high gain Si transistor for Q1 to see if I could get something similar but pushed a little harder but never got to it.

The usuall 2n3904/6's and 2n5087/8/9 were nothing special... Not bad, but just not as fun or unique as the others i had tried...

So, since all I did with the Si's was grab them by model number, there's probably more that could be done with matching them up and whatnot. I think that in the end, the material wasn't really the biggest thing, but that the other parameters I don't actually understand probably just as much to the sound.

Otherwise, thats about where I was at for transistors. But take it with a grain of salt... I don't have the ear for guitar effects that I'm sure most of you do, and I'm pretty inexperienced with all this. Anyone else want to give some thoughts?


And here's the painting on the first. I like it, but the little details I missed bug me, so the next one should be a big step up. I need to trouble shoot the circuit, I think I cooked something putting it together and haven't had time to take a good look at it.





Things I learned painting:
1) Less Whiskey, more patience and planning
2) Get a couple cheap paintbrushes... Anything's gotta be better than the mangled brush on the bottle and a toothpick.
3) Draw the designs on first (with room for the knobs and washers) instead of freehand.

I'm looking forwad to doing box #2.

[mills]

Woohoo! Got the problem solved and the Ge version up and running! Stupid mistake- had a transistor backwards- but at least I didn't cook any components like I thought.

Sounds great and all that.