Tone Bender mk1 advice

[LaceSensor]

Hi guys

its my dads birthday soon and I wanna make him a tone bender mk1
what would be good transistors for these?
I have some russian germaniums.... what do you think? GT308 and some 10? somethings...

any advice would be cool
i have found some awesome enclosures for the build but quite spendy incase I dont have the right trannies.
I have a week to build it so cant wait on transistors from overseas...

[agoldoor]

Hmm, good question. My recommendation would be to just have LOTS of transistors to try, whatever they may be.

My favorite MKI I've built so far was with OC71s, but it took me MAAAANNNNNY devices before I found a set that sounded good without too much noise.

[Blues Healer]

quite a few folks have said that the particular transistor is less important than the gain

I've also seen comments that the Mk I is notoriously difficult to bias properly ... not that I would discourage you from building one -- I have a MK 1.5 by BMF pedals.
If it was me, though, I'd have to do a little digging about the transistor gains.

[copachino]

Hi guys

its my dads birthday soon and I wanna make him a tone bender mk1
what would be good transistors for these?
I have some russian germaniums.... what do you think? GT308 and some 10? somethings...

any advice would be cool
i have found some awesome enclosures for the build but quite spendy incase I dont have the right trannies.
I have a week to build it so cant wait on transistors from overseas...

have you tried small bear trannies??, tonebender are a pain in the ass to bias, but with small bear you can get a good sound, maybe not the right clone but a fair one and without too much effort

[midwayfair]

The Russians will be fine.

Look up Electric Warrior's voltages on DIYSB.

Sort out some that have some decent leakage -- you want about 200uA for each.

After that, you can basically plug them in until you get something you like the sound of. Gains are all over the place in measured units, but people generally recommend something around 30-60 in Q1 and Q2, and something closer to 100 in Q3.

[G.G.]

I built 2 MKI's using the Gary Hurst w/ trimmers layout over at tagboard. I used a Small Bear generic set in one and their OC75 set in another and could definitely tell a difference.

here are a couple clips of the OC75 build:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sygN8KiBiTY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wyZb10SCWjI

and the generic set build:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDc9wR6fSi8

[LaceSensor]

Thanks all

I'm in the uk so can't order small bear, I might just make a fuzz face,

I bought some cool tone bender style enclosures though so it needs to be vintage fuzz with 2 knobs