T34 Red Hamer Fuzz

[raulduke]

I bought a load of old Russian Ge Transistors on the 'bay a while ago and came up with this Fuzz Face variant while messing on the breadboard.

It's basically a tweaked Fuzz Face, gain preset to max with a 1K resistor, and with a Gagan pre-gain control and an output cap blend (I find some Fuzz Faces too woolly due to the amount of bass they can kick out).

Trannies are GT308V's (Q1 hfe ~ 80, Q2 hfe ~ 100) picked from a batch of about 50.

The 3PDT PCB is a voltage inverter/doubler PCB that I use for -9V/18V builds.

It's all sounding good, nice and open and 'crunchy' like a nice germanium Fuzz Face, but these Russian trannies can be quite noisy at times (more so than other Ge trannies I've tried).

I've got a few PCB's spare so was going to play around and see if I can come up with a more saturated/high gain Silicon NPN version that works for me.

Hope you like the pics!

[jimilee]

The 3PDT PCB is a voltage inverter/doubler PCB that I use for -9V/18V builds.

That sounds pretty awesome man. Did you design it? And the Fuzz looks spot on as well.

[raulduke]

The 3PDT PCB is a voltage inverter/doubler PCB that I use for -9V/18V builds.

That sounds pretty awesome man. Did you design it? And the Fuzz looks spot on as well.

Cheers dude.

Yeah I designed them; it's just a standard charge pump circuit mounted on a 3PDT switch PCB.

The last lot would only fit 125B's and 1590BB's, but I've re-done the PCB to also fit in 1590B's.

[Bret608]

This looks awesome--those knobs have "old fuzz" written all over them!

I really like the idea of the integrated voltage inverter/3PDT PCB as well.

[Isaiah]

This looks fantastic!

What are the knobs you're using?
Could you tell me where they're available in the UK, please?
I'm hoping the diameters of that particular range will be suitable for a synthesiser project...

[raulduke]

This looks fantastic!

What are the knobs you're using?
Could you tell me where they're available in the UK, please?
I'm hoping the diameters of that particular range will be suitable for a synthesiser project...

Hey dude sorry for missing this.

The knobs are from Radio Spares:

http://uk.rs-online.com/web/c/?searchTerm=skirt+style+control+knob&sra=oss&r=t

[Isaiah]

Thanks for the link.
The diameters look about right for what I'm thinking of.
They have more of a "British" and test equipment vibe than most knobs.