I want a new fuzz pedal...

I used to have one of these but I sold it like a fool. Amazing pedal, if you ever come across one buy it! The company that mede it (Damage Control) went on to become Strymon.
 
eSGEe said:
they make a blues one too
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Damage Control Liquid Blues Distortion Blue | Reverb

Damage Control Liquid Blues DistortionPure Class A DistortionDual Tube OverdriveThe Clarity control knob on the Damage Control Liquid Blues Dual Tube Overdrive Pedal enhances articulation even when higher gain setting are used. From clean compressed boost to sustained bluesy overdrive, the Liquid...
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And a red one that is more "metal".
 
These three pedals are some great old school fuzz circuits. I use the Reuss Three Volt Fuzz in the Alice Cooper cover band I’m in. It’s based on the old Gibson Maestro FZ-1 Fuzz Tone. Plugged into a Marshall, I get that early Michael Bruce and Glen Buxton sound.

The Caitlinbread Fuzzrite is done in collaboration with Semie Moseley, and is the Mosrite Fuzzrite circuit.

The Black Cat Super Fuzz is the circuit from the Univox Super Fuzz that Pete Townsend used on Live at Leeds, as well as many other people used over the years.

A19DC7CD-B24D-472D-B10A-3654A1AFFA1A.jpeg
 
Now it's properly modded with two new transistors, two expensive CV7003's. Q1 has a HFE of 93 and Q2 has 117. Leakage currents are .015 and .032 respectively. I can't say they improved much. There is a bit less fuzz, the bias pot could easily make it go sputtering before but not anymore, cranking the trim pot makes it sound good though. The pedal is definitely noisier now, like the transistors pick up RF static, the old ones just had a bit of hiss.

I was hoping for a wider range of cleaning up when I roll of guitar volume but that didn't happen, it goes from fuzz to clean instantly as the volume knob passes 9.

Some pictures below. Looking at all those surface mounted components it's far removed from the simple circuit that the original fuzz face used to be. Perhaps it was the wrong pedal to mod or maybe I should have built something from scratch using the new transistors.

IMG_20200522_162755.jpgIMG_20200522_163015.jpgIMG_20200522_160510.jpgIMG_20200522_161757.jpg
 
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I had another go and messed around with the bias pot some more while playing. There is a very, very narrow setting that makes it sound good and that gives me a wider range as I roll of the volume. Now I'm pretty happy with the way it sounds. It's still a bit noisier than before but the snap crackle and pop is mostly gone with the new bias setting.

This is how it looks with the new transostors, I had to bend them to make the battery hatch fit, these are significantly taller than the old ones.

IMG_20200522_225927.jpg
 
Common wisdom says you want to set the trimpot to give -4.5 ~ -4.8V on the collector of Q2 for the stock fuzz face performance (of course, settings are a personal preference thing too). Better "sound" can often be achieved by using a (zinc/carbon) battery that is down on voltage a bit (as low as 7V), or by dialling down the supply voltage from you power brick a bit if it has this feature.
While I think of it, a tip that came from Dave Weir (who arguably did more tech work for Hendrix than Roger Mayer ever did) on how Jimi used to set the controls: (this is into a tube amp)
Fuzz set to minimum & Level set to maximum, use guitar volume control to taste. Cheers
 
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ivan H said:
Common wisdom says you want to set the trimpot to give -4.5 ~ -4.8V on the collector of Q2 for the stock fuzz face performance (of course, settings are a personal preference thing too). Better "sound" can often be achieved by using a (zinc/carbon) battery that is down on voltage a bit (as low as 7V), or by dialling down the supply voltage from you power brick a bit if it has this feature.
While I think of it, a tip that came from Dave Weir (who arguably did more tech work for Hendrix than Roger Mayer ever did) on how Jimi used to set the controls: (this is into a tube amp)
Fuzz set to minimum & Level set to maximum, use guitar volume control to taste. Cheers
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Thanks! I'll fool around with it some more and see where it takes me.
 
All the little snap, crackles, pops and noise seem to be gone. It was a cold solder on one of the transistor legs :oops2:

I'm actually pretty happy with this now, plus I have a set of components coming in a few days to build one more using the old transistors.
 
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