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Voltages didn't change, nor should have.
Well, some fizzyness is left, but that ugly splatty somewhat misbiased sounding distortion is gone and notes decay much more natural with slowly cleaning up distortion. Before the change the splatty distortion was simply cut off as the note decayed, leaving a quiet clean signal.
Garfo, I found that this circuit sounds best in front of an already broken up tube amp, as do most fuzztones.
Also it was designed as a booster really, not a distortion device.
I will try a bipolar cap for C9 maybe this WE and report if it changes the sound any....
Timo

Hi All,
like many I experienced splatty distortion and awful fizzy decay in my Cherrybomb build. After making damn sure all the circuit was ok, all solderjoints ok I tryed several different transistors with hfe readings ranging from 50 to 300. Many different sounds and gain levels, but the splat never went away even al I installed trimpots on the collectors and biased every transistor right. I was very frustrated!
So yesterday, while poking the circuit with my DMM for the hundredst time, it occured to me that C9 had more voltage on it's negative than it's positive side. So I flipped it around and - Viola: Splat is gone!!!
I checked various schematics floating on the net and the original looking ones have that elcap facing positive to Q3s collector. Seems that Brian has that wrong here.
I hope this helps some other builders.
Greetings,
Timo

Hi all,
I just wanted to share the mods I performed on my Boneyard build:
First of all if you change R5 to reduce gain you have to reduce C5 as well to maintain the frequency response. I use 100R and 1µF here.
For clipping I like a 2N7000 and a BAT41 on one side and a 2N7000 and a red LED on the other. This makes for a bit smoother clipping, less raw. I have stock and modded clipping on a switch.
I also soldered a cap across the lugs 1 and 2 of the Tone control to smooth out the highs a bit on higher settings of the tone control. Values from 10nF to 22nF gave good results.
C7 is a good place to shape the response of the bass and lower mids. Try values of 68nF to 100nF. I found the stock 68nF a bit woofy with my setup, so I changed to 82nF and am happy now.
A little goes a long way and can make this circuit sound REALLY good!
Happy modding,
Timo