welcome to Apocalypse Audio, your haven for DIY guitar effects in the end times. so, start prayin to the fuzz gods, savin up those parts, and remember, when the big one goes off- keep your transistors shielded from those pesky electromagnetic pulses!

3.1.10

TRIODE FUZZ NO.2/ AMZ SIXTIES STYLE FUZZ TAGBOARD LAYOUT




a while back, i posted this little article on a couple of fuzz circuits i found on the triode electronics site. the first is very similar to a fuzz face style circuit, where as the second is a little bit different. it has what appears to be an emitter follower into a kind of dc coupled complementary gain stage pair. very much similar to the jordan bosstone. here is a link to the original article.


http://apocalypseaudio.blogspot.com/2009/05/triode-fuzz-1-2.html 


while surfing around the voluminous pages of Jack Orman's AMZ effects website, i saw something that looked a little familiar.


it seems that the triode fuzz and the amz sixties style fuzz are one in the same!  most likely, this is an old circuit taken from one of the many electronics "cookbooks" from back in the day.  regardless, i've heard from a good source that it's supposed to be a great sounding circuit, so i decided to draw up a layout- this time for tagboard construction.  tagboard, eyelet board, or turret board can be a fun way to do your circuit board construction for a change.  there is no etching or drilling to be done, and you get to use those nice sounding axial foil caps that would've never fit on your pcb circuit.  i really like using this particular tagboard that can be found at weber as well as apex jr. for very reasonable prices.




it has 3 different solder points per tag that makes it very easy to find holes for your passives, actives, and wire without running out of space.  the layout i made for the triode/sixties fuzz circuit was made specifically for this type of board, but you could easily adapt it to other types of tagboard out there.  i haven't built it yet, but i do plan to in the near future.  as always, let me know if you decide to build it yourself.

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i got this thing on the breadboard, and had a rough time getting it to bias properly.  i'm going to try and figure it out, and i'll post anything i find.

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due to problems with this circuit biasing correctly, i have pulled the layout.  i'll post a new tagboard layout for a better design shortly.  looking at this one with a more informed set of eyes, there are many things that could be done differently to make this a better design.  i'll post another tagboard layout for a proper fuzz circuit once i get it checked and verified.

3 comments:

  1. I have built this and all I can get is a fizziness sound out of it. I have checked double checked and can't figure it out. I have some tag board from CE Distribution that was identical.

    I am thinking either I messed up on the transistors or there is a discrepency in the layout with the transistors? I know Q1 and Q3 are NPN and Q2 is PNP. The collector emmitter and base are the same though are they not? Just reverse polarity. I assumed the reason the NPN transistors are reverse are due to its reversed polarity, but wouldn't that mean all the polarized caps should be the same direction as the caps have been reversed themselves?

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  2. you know, i put this on the breadboard the other day, and i had a problem with it too...
    i think the e-caps are in the right direction, the positive side should be toward the highest voltage point, and that looks correct. the reason i put it up was that i was told it was a good sounding fuzz from soulsonic-a reputable source. maybe i'll ask him what the deal is.

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  3. maybe try reversing the second elytic. that might be it. i'll post something if i get it figured out.

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