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I don't know about you guys but I'm ready for 2025 to be in the rear view mirror:)

Hell yes ! Happy 2026 in advance everyone!

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I would take out the ICs, check polarity & continuity from DC Jack to 1054 pins (or through diode if any) to make sure that's good and check for shorts around there.

Then I would power up and check the voltages at the pins where the 1054 would be.

Once you've established you gave DC going to the charge pump and no shorts (check resistance between voltage output and ground too), I would put the pump back in and check voltage at the output of the power supply circuitery...

Then at the pins of the other chip(s) etc...

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Which one end up your favourite out of curiosity?

Probably HAIRY or CRUNCH CITY PART II --- you can use any low-gain NPN in Q6, the A5T ones are unobtanium, but there might be some MPS6512s around. PM me if you want a set. Maybe I can send them in a flat mailer on the cheap 

Sorry to have taken over your build report...

Nothing to be sorry about, those discussions are great !

Today I finally brought my build to my son. Tele in, joyo 5F1 clone out. It sounds awesome:-)

While I am allowed to fiddle and make another different one, I am forbidden to touch that one further :-) My Q6 measures around 190 with my GM328 (the other ones are closer to 120). Still far from a 2N5088 :-)

I'll see what I can find around here before I bother you with shipping to Australia :-)

Also for the Ge diodes, I used some black band allegedly -1N34A (from stompboxparts iirc) with a Vf around 0.3V. I'll play around with other options on the ProtoBoard for build #2, I have some D9E's that have been great with Misfit around 0.35 and allegedly-1N34A around 0.4V. They seem to all have a bit of reverse current so maybe legit Ge....


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Hah, yeah after a number of good folks here suggested it, I went back to mid to mid-low gain transistors. I mean, 5088s will work, but going to lower gain reduced some of the unpleasant tones.

I read that write-up of Aion's as well after my first (terrible ) version of it, which helped incredibly.

https://www.madbeanpedals.com/forum/index.php?topic=34540.msg330176#msg330176

I went and made silly names for the combination of NPNs that I tried, even.



I'm not sure if the Qx part numbers line to Brian's , but I'll post it later tonight or tomorrow.

Which one end up your favourite out of curiosity?

Kevin's PCB has extra holes for accommodating different pinouts, with Brian's you have to cross the legs to use a 2N390x but that's not a huge deal. Interestingly Aion's "tone pot" mod seems to be strictly to replace the switch with a 50kB.



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Interestingly, I saw in your schematic you use a 2n5088. Out of curiosity I checked around what others use.

AionFX notably has a whole doc section on transistor selection.

The main thing I noticed there is that it recommends higher hfe at the beginning and lower at the end, especially Q6.

When I built mine I sorted my 2sc828s (to match Q4 and Q5) and did the opposite, I put the highest hfe I could find in Q6, possibly naive attempt at compensating the signal loss from clipping and tone :-)

Your 2n5088 would I suppose be similarly high gain.

I still love the sound :-) it does get very loud and noisy with the balance pot anywhere past noon but who cares ? :-)

I might try to breadboard or even build another one with a different transistor arrangement for fun.

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Store is open again, obviously. This coming week I will get back on track with the release schedule. I do not expect any restocks of sold out items until next month. Gotta make a few $$ and get this engine running again. More soon.

Welcome back :-) Hopefully you managed to refuel a bit !

I have enough PCBs piled up that need building (and boxes, Tayda's been slooooow lately) that I probably won't order more for a month or two :-)

I've been tempted by Total Recall to see how it compares with skoolie noise-wise (might be dreaming it but there's a whine that comes and goes at some combinations of delay & modulation that makes me wonder if there's something between the charge pump clock and lfo). Taking one out can't hurt :-)

I'll probably order one when they are back .

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Thanks ! I'll try to breadboard it next week maybe and compare.

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I'm glad you like it. The Bonesaw is probably my favorite fuzz I've built in the last year or two. It's just gnarly.

I suck too much at guitar to really appreciate it to its fullest But yes I love what I hear so far, can't wait to see what the kids do with it when I bring it over !

I also *really* like your standard design. Being able to use those nice semi-rigid ribbons instead of a pile of wires between the main PCB and the foot switch is really neat and saves time (I hate soldering wires :-)



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I've switched to a modified version of slapping a pot in place of the switch. Can give me just a touch of low end without the mids dropping out completely.

How do you wire the pot ? A mix between the scoop and non-scooped path ?

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Love me the super-fuzz! What do the DIP switches do? Control the shape of the scoop?

Yes, they change the value of a capacitor in the tone filter to "tame" the scoop (sound a bit less like a dentist drill)... I haven't played with it much yet.

Gosh Tone isn't a mid scoop, it's a mid grave :-) Also with the gain past noon it's basically a noise amplifier, you hope you have a humbucker or two pickups wired in opposition:-)

I love it !


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This thing is very aptly named, especially with the tone switch up

Here's my build. Usual method of coaxing an AI (Gemini here) into giving me something close to what I want, vectorizer.ai to turn it into a decent .svg, inkscape for the rest and scribus to convert the colors and export the layered PDF for our friends at Tayda.

Would you believe (Don Adams
Get Smart, tv series voice) a dodgy NE570N? Not a ton of hair there to start. Now there's a bit less. 
Thanks All 

I had the same problem, sorry I didn't see your post earlier. I bought a few from a local (Australian) pedal parts shop, they are all bad. They apologized and refunded, I ended using a v571d from Cabintech.

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Well, I got it! Just hope I can smoothly readjust to working life.

Congrats :-)

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Hi @madbean  !

Nothing catastrophic :-) The shopping list is missing R9 (330k)

Cheers
Ben.

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