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Which resistors when using Ge trannies from SmallBear?

Started by jv1234, February 10, 2011, 07:08:02 AM

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jv1234

Hey there, I just built a Zombii using some Germanium Fuzz Face transistors from Small Bear... and you know how they include resistors you should use in order to achieve 4.5v reading on Q2 or whatever... well should I be concerned with that when building a Zombii (since the paper says those values are for those building a Fuzz Face)? I noticed the values are close to the stock Zombii values - by that I mean "in the ballpark", and I'm thinking maybe I should use those included resistors? Or maybe I don't need to since there are so many knobs to tweak, I should be able to dial in what I'm looking for anyways right?

I'm kind of a newb and would appreciate some guidance here. I've built maybe 25 pedals, so I do have some experience. I'm just not trained/educated at all, with electronics. All self taught. Thank you.

PS- the pedal sounds awesome. Just curious if I should have used the Small Bear resistors instead of the normal Zombii values.

stecykmi

Probably better that you used the schematic values since the FF and the zombii are biased pretty differently. Plus the zombii has a lot of controls so you can probably achieve any tones you'd get by using the SB resistor values just by tweaking knobs.

The 4.5V bias voltage for a FF is almost a science at this point... Bias voltages for the zombii aren't even static because of all the controls so all you would have been doing is slightly changing the feel of the knob rotation.

madbean

I would hang on to those resistors and the little slip of paper he includes. You never know when you might switch out transistors and then that info becomes relevant again!

But yeah, stick with the stock values in the Zombii as stecykmi  said.

jv1234

Thanks guys for the quick replies. That's just what I did and just what I'll do. I just had some doubts in the back of my mind. Thanks for confirming. GREAT pedal! So nice and neat/tidy inside, slick stuff, and sounds great too!