Been busy, finished in March and April.

[chromesphere]

Nice builds man, love the aluminium / sticker idea!  Hope you liked the transistors!
Paul

[gingataff]

Just adding some gut shots.

SJ Effects Prince Albert. Caps galore and my first attempt at a home made stamp.





Bumblebee with full mojo and Chromesphere transistors. I really recommend this fuzz.

[chromesphere]

Looks great man!  Hope you like the transistors?

Hey what brand resistors and caps are those? They look cool!

Paul

[gingataff]

Hey Paul,
The transistors sound great although if I max everything it gets a bit squealy. I'll try playing with the sag to see if that helps but to be honest there's is so much gain on the Bumblebee that I don't feel the need to max it.
I expected a thin 60s sound but it's so warm and beefy!

The bumblebee is using Mullard tropical fish film caps and Roderstein lytics (a cheap xicon for the power)
the carbon comps may be Allen Bradley, Kamaya or Xicon, or perhaps a mix. I forgot
Road Rage is bog standard.

The Prince Albert has a mix of Mallory, Vishay and SOZO film caps, a funky styrene cap for one of the pfs and a high voltage mlcc for the other, and Nichicon lytics. Dale resistors throughout. Those standing caps make it a tight squeeze.

[chromesphere]

I think low leakage and low hfe will get a more old school sound, starved, splatty sound from the buzzaround.  I have low leakage high gains in mine and it sounds like a modern distortion pedal!  I have enough old school sounding fuzz pedals i decided to leave it that way Its a very transistor dependent circuit.  If you have other transistors lying around, throw them in and see the difference!  q1 and q2 are a darlington pair so they will multiply the leakage.  I havent really found a huge difference with noise though from high (400ua) to low (10ua) leakage.  There really is no combination that ive heard in it that doesnt sound good!  I really have to mod it with a dpdt to switch between 2 trannies on q3 at some point...

Love the look of those resistors in the prince albert!  They look copper colored in the photo!?

Nice builds

Paul

[gingataff]

I've got a tb set from small bear that I'll try at some point

the resistors are brown, must be lucky lighting;D

Sent from my SC-02B using Tapatalk 2

[das234]

Nice collection.  I like the variety.

I'm working on my Buzzaround now.  I got 2 sets of Paul's transistors to try but the gt309s are not cooperating so far and I don't have any way to test them.  The Ac125s sound good though.  What do you have covering your tranny leads?  Is that tiny shrink wrap or wire insulation?

[gingataff]

Thanks!

The leads are covered with the insulation from the same brown wire that I used to wire the pedal, I thought it would be a nice match. I just stripped it off in long pieces and cut to length.

I'll probably do some transistor swapping at some point but too many other builds in the queue at the moment.

[das234]

I think I'll use the wire insulation idea on mine.  I did get the Russian transistors to work this morning but I didn't like them.  I tried in various configurations alone and with the AC125s and I always preferred the AC125s.  Still sounds a little trebly for my taste but I can probably find a setting or two that I like.  I saw a post about adding some bass to a buzzaround somehow.  I'll have to track that down and see if that helps.

[jvg13]

All great looking builds, but I love the Buzzaround in particular - recreated the vibe of the original perfectly.  Looks fantastic.

das234: 
I think if you were to adjust the capacitor values in the tone control section of the circuit in the Buzzaround you could go some way to making it less trebly to some extent... I think there's a 1nf cap in there which you could up?  But it's prob about 3 years since I built one and the details are a bit hazy, so don't quote me (or act on what I say until you look into things)

Remember, the Buzzaround was the original 'darlington' fuzz circuit.  The MK III Tone Bender and its numerous derivations was a copy (by Sola Sound) with some development of the circuit.  I think that has a 2.2nf cap in place of the 1nf in its tone section... but transistor choice will affect things quite a lot I'm sure.

[juansolo]

Awesome all round. 

[das234]

All great looking builds, but I love the Buzzaround in particular - recreated the vibe of the original perfectly.  Looks fantastic.

das234: 
I think if you were to adjust the capacitor values in the tone control section of the circuit in the Buzzaround you could go some way to making it less trebly to some extent... I think there's a 1nf cap in there which you could up?  But it's prob about 3 years since I built one and the details are a bit hazy, so don't quote me (or act on what I say until you look into things)

Remember, the Buzzaround was the original 'darlington' fuzz circuit.  The MK III Tone Bender and its numerous derivations was a copy (by Sola Sound) with some development of the circuit.  I think that has a 2.2nf cap in place of the 1nf in its tone section... but transistor choice will affect things quite a lot I'm sure.

I tried swapping C4 with a 2.2nf.  It seemed to fatten up the low end but also seemed to really boost the string noise on the low strings.  Could be my imagination but I swear I heard the difference.  Guess I'll go back to the 1nf and play with the tone knobs on the guitar to tweak the tone.

[jvg13]

I tried swapping C4 with a 2.2nf.  It seemed to fatten up the low end but also seemed to really boost the string noise on the low strings.  Could be my imagination but I swear I heard the difference.  Guess I'll go back to the 1nf and play with the tone knobs on the guitar to tweak the tone.

Thinking on it, I remember now from breadboarding these circuits that taking all the output signal direct from the collector of q3, as the unusual buzzaround does, instead of after q3's collector resistor like the fuzz face & tone bender mk ii circuits, results in a brasher sound.  It's a big part of the buzzaround's character I thought (my humble opinion).

If you look at the mk iii schematic you'll see that it's really a combination of both approaches, it retains a high pass filter connected to q3 connector (I believe I'm right in saying).

If you've not tried the mk iii circuit that cld be more to your taste.  But diff tyes of transistors will affect how all these old circuits sound quite a lot I think.

[nzCdog]

Awesome stuff man, super clean.  Really enjoyed your dipthoniser demo... now I NEED one

[MattOcaster]

You gotta keep on keepin on