Uploaded December 2012 | Updated September 2026, 16 hours ago
Fuzz box development. I wanted a fuzz box that I liked the sound of and desired the 'soft' tone of germanium transistors. I don't much like the sound produced by the direct coupled germanium configurations, such as the early Fuzz Face and Big Muff. To me, they don't seem to perform well at low guitar volume control settings. I've built loads of Si fuzzes and they're no longer much of a challenge. I opted for my own Germanium design using independently voltage divider biased stages, cascaded by the coupling capacitors: similar to the way valve amp stages are cascaded: it turned out quite nice! Unfortunately, you can't get S-DEC solder-less breadboards anymore. I find these help if constructing using big components and the ease of removal, for demo purposes any component, that these boards permit. At a point during this movie, I remove a bypass capacitor to show how it affects the gain of a transistor stage. Transistors are 1-OC44. 2-OC45. 3-OC71. This is a diode clipped design, using silicon 1N914s. My test amplifier is one of my home made valve types with an ECL82 and ECC83, working clean. I hope this will inspire S-DEC to start making them again and inspire other fuzz-box designer/builders to get going. Sry about my rubbish guitar playing, I'm very much a learner and hope to be reasonably good one day: That will be the day when little piggies grow wings and take off! Fangz 4 wochin'!
Fuzz box development. I wanted a fuzz box that I liked the sound of and desired the 'soft' tone of germanium transistors. I don't much like the sound produced by the direct coupled germanium configurations, such as the early Fuzz Face and Big Muff. To me, they don't seem to perform well at low guitar volume control settings. I've built loads of Si fuzzes and they're no longer much of a challenge. I opted for my own Germanium design using independently voltage divider biased stages, cascaded by the coupling capacitors: similar to the way valve amp stages are cascaded: it turned out quite nice! Unfortunately, you can't get S-DEC solder-less breadboards anymore. I find these help if constructing using big components and the ease of removal, for demo purposes any component, that these boards permit. At a point during this movie, I remove a bypass capacitor to show how it affects the gain of a transistor stage. Transistors are 1-OC44. 2-OC45. 3-OC71. This is a diode clipped design, using silicon 1N914s. My test amplifier is one of my home made valve types with an ECL82 and ECC83, working clean. I hope this will inspire S-DEC to start making them again and inspire other fuzz-box designer/builders to get going. Sry about my rubbish guitar playing, I'm very much a learner and hope to be reasonably good one day: That will be the day when little piggies grow wings and take off! Fangz 4 wochin'!
