Meat Ritual

[Aleph Null]

This fuzz was made on a whim. It was inspired by the Meathead, Ritual, Snack Shack, and the like. I used what I had on hand, so I took some liberties with the values. Only the enclosure, foot switch, and power jack were purchased to complete the build.



The bypass indicator isn't an LED, but actually a wheat bulb. It's brighter than a dying star. I used an actual guitar potentiometer with a 3/8" (10mm?) shaft. This made it easy to get the position indicator in place.



I'm a glutton for punishment: I used sockets for the transistors and standing electrolytic capacitors.



This schematic reflects the values I had on hand at the time. I tested a few different transistor pairs and settled on two 2N3904: medium/low gain for Q1 and high gain for Q2. You could probably get good results with a 2N5088 in Q2, but it squeals in the Q1 position.



It cleans up with the guitar volume knob nicely and there's plenty of output. The decay tends to sputter out, but this could probably be minimized by upping the 10uF electrolytic to something bigger.

[Thewintersoldier]

I would love be to hear this, I love this kinda mcgyver type build!

[Aleph Null]

Honestly, it sounds pretty much like the D*A*M Meathead. Maybe slightly brighter. I'm not sure how they settled on their capacitor values, but values are much larger than they need to be. According to my calculations, the circuit I built doesn't roll off anything above 33Hz or so.