The secret weapon fuzz

[Aentons]

Here's a schematic, based on EBRAddict's composite, some additional photos of vintage units at Steelguitarforum, the thread so far, and the BossTone schematics by R.G. Keen and Aron Nelson.  Clipping diodes are almost certainly 1N400x, but 1N4148 would work just as well.  Transistors are very likely the same as a BossTone, Q1 = Si NPN with an Hfe under 100 and Q2 = Si PNP with Hfe between 150 and 200.  At least these sound best to me in a BossTone, YMMV.   The input 5.1k and output 47k resistors were sometimes on-board and sometimes off-board.  Original pots were both B100k, but I like A10k for the volume.  I've also re-added the MSA wiring diagram that the OP had included but that seems to have gone missing.  Best regards, Mike

Hero right here ^

No Joke. Thanks Mike!

[Aentons]

That Bag of Dicks sounds great

Bag of Dicks.... hahahahah That's the best pedal name ever for sure

[lars]

I remember an older post on this forum about achieving the Siamese Dream sound a few years ago. I can't seem to find it, so it might have been lost during one of the big forum hiccups. There was some talk about just using a Microsynth, but a good chunk of the conversation focused on using a Bosstone into an ESR Graphic Fuzz. The ESR had to be tweaked a little to play well with the Bosstone, but I copped a decent Pumpkins-ish sound from that setup. Might be worth looking into finding a particular sound and not a specific circuit.

That was a project I was working on that I was going to call the triclops fuzz. Unfortunately a big part of what made that original circuit work in such a unique and interesting way was an old metal can IC I had pulled from a Cadillac 8-track radio. It got fried. I have no idea if it was a standard 741-style op amp or an OTA. It didn't behave quite like a 741. You could get this amazing gated fuzz sound out of it if you hooked a 5K potentiometer between pins 1 and 5, which correspond to the "offset null" pins on a 741. It was probably the best-sounding fuzz IC I had ever heard.

*Update* 6/30/20
There's been a development since this thread got resurrected. I got interested in the project again and found some of those same ICs on Ebay. They arrived today, I tested them, and they work. But the crazy part is that I held onto the original one I had and tested it for kicks...it worked as well. Turns out it didn't get fried 6 years ago. So now I have three of them...