Fuzz Face of Doom!

[Hexjibber]

Hi all,

Just looking for some general advice/experience with a Fuzz Face build I'm planning. Basically the remit is a doom fuzz pedal (guitar is tuned to drop G#) so maximum low end and sustain for days at a time!

My plan thus far is the following;
- Stick a COT50 on a pot before the FF to act as an extra gain stage of sorts, the COT50 seems a good bet rather than just a straight boost (LPB-01 or similar) as I can fiddle around with the clipping stage a bit.
- Just for fun I'm sticking a rotary switch in place of the FF input cap that will go up to 10uf for maximum ooof!
- I think I might permanently jumper the FF output pot to max and then to control level add a Stratoblaster after the FF which will have the dual bonus of pushing the amp's input stage harder.

It's all relatively theoretical at the moment but makes sense to me, can anyone see any potential pitfalls that I may be overlooking?

Cheers!
Graham

[culturejam]

Boost in front is a good idea. Both the Fuzz Factory and Tonebender MKII are essentially a fuzz face with a boost in front.

[Hexjibber]

Boost in front is a good idea. Both the Fuzz Factory and Tonebender MKII are essentially a fuzz face with a boost in front.

Ok that sounds good to me, I wondered whether I would run into problems with a boost/gain circuit in front of the Fuzz Face as have read they can be fussy about being first in the chain with wahs, buffers and such, or does that not really apply here as it's just a simple gain circuit?

[RobA]

Boost in front is a good idea. Both the Fuzz Factory and Tonebender MKII are essentially a fuzz face with a boost in front.

Ok that sounds good to me, I wondered whether I would run into problems with a boost/gain circuit in front of the Fuzz Face as have read they can be fussy about being first in the chain with wahs, buffers and such, or does that not really apply here as it's just a simple gain circuit?

It does apply to using a buffer in front of the FF, but it depends on what you are looking for from the FF. The reason for not putting anything in front of the FF is the loading of the pickups by the input impedance of the circuit. If you put a buffer in front of the FF without altering something else in the input of the FF, you can end up with lots of noise, too much fuzz, and not the frequency response you are looking ... or, it could be that this is just what you are looking for -- it depends.

Get out a breadboard and test it and see how it works for you. If you haven't started breadboarding things yet, fuzzes are the perfect place to start. They are pretty simple circuits and tweaking bits here and there is pretty fun to do with them.

A MOSFET boost/buffer is also a good choice to try in front of a fuzz. But, it might be even worse at making things explode into a mess of uncontrolled fuzziness.

I have a pedal that has a Rangemaster and a FF together in a box. I have it setup so that it goes FF->Rangemaster. It's pretty good this way because the FF gets the interaction with the pickups and then it overdrives the Rangemaster a bit before the Rangemaster pushes the amp. I've had them reversed before and that was slick too because the Rangemaster drives the FF into nuts levels.  If you put a toggle on the treble boost to change the input cap and put a toggle in the box to change the order of the effects, then you could get all sorts of combinations out of it.

[davent]

What about Joe Gagan's Skyripper which i believe is essentially a Rangemaster into an Easy Face (Fuzz Face).

http://www.diystompboxes.com/smfforum/index.php?topic=91485.msg780631#msg780631

[blearyeyes]

That sounds like fun!

[Bret608]

All these idea are cool; the Skyripper especially looks like fun! However, if doom is what you're after, I think the starting point should be bumping up the in and out caps - 10uf for the input as you mentioned, and something like 47n for the output. I built up a vero recently with this combination in an NPN hybrid setup for the transistors (germanium Q1, silicon Q2). The combination of those caps and the germanium in Q1 work nicely against silicon's tendency to just make everything tighter, brighter, and more distortion-like. But of course, with silicon in Q2 you still get the gain! Mine pushes a huge amount of bass and sustains really long--it's good, Sabbth-y fun even just with my Mustang.

Credit where credit's due--JakeFuzz here on the forum suggested these mods to me.

[Hexjibber]

Only just caught up on all these replies, cheers guys!

The Skyripper does look fun but I think I'm looking for something pretty straightforward to bring the Doom!

I was wondering how high to go with the output cap actually, was just going to socket and see what I needed, I shall use 47n as my starting point tho, cheers!

I'm also going to try an MPSA13 in Q1 which I have been told works a treat for filth levels of gain! I would like to try a germ in there tho for some old school fuzz tone, plenty of options!

Just waiting for some parts to arrive and I'm going to get cracking!

[marmora]

It might be pretty basic, but I've really enjoyed the sound coming out of an Axis Face

Here's a write-up on the circuit, specifically for doom applications:

http://www.foreverdoomed.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=8515

[the3secondrule]

watching this thread with interest..

I'm going to try something similar with green ringer --> Rangemaster --> fuzzface

[Hexjibber]

I've finished this build now, sounds brutal! Huge amounts of low end thunder, could perhaps do with a touch more upper mids to help it cut but I'm really pleased with it!

Build report thread link below!

http://www.madbeanpedals.com/forum/index.php?topic=17517