Build Your Own Clone Message Board

Just finished an ESV Fuzz - my first pedal build. I understand tube circuits reasonably well but don't know much about solid state devices.

When I had the pedal squared away, I started experimenting with my Strat. Cool & very familiar sound Then I switched over to my Heritage 535 equipped with Seymour Duncan Antiquity humbuckers. Yee hah! THAT'S a whole lot of fun. So my question is, what could I switch in the circuit to get that same totally saturated fuzz with single coils?

I've looked here and elsewhere for mods, but there are sooo many! This looks like a pretty cool collection, but I don't know if any of them address my question about a single coil/humbucker switch: http://www.beavisaudio.com/Projects/Fuz ... ods_V2.gif

I've noticed another odd difference between the Strat and the 535. When I turn the volume down just a touch off 10 on the 535, there's a abrupt drop in volume with the Fuzz engaged. Effect is smooth with the Strat.

Also, I'm confused about the Fuzz and how it interacts with my Strat. I've got a series/parallel switch. Normally, parallel is lower volume and sweeter - typical Strat tone (don't know why they call it "quack" but whatever) - and heavier, more humbucker-like when 2 or 3 coils are in series. With the Fuzz engaged, the parallel setting is louder and more raw. Series seems a bit muffled and definitely lower output. What the heck is up with that?

Regarding the build itself, I forgot a couple of fundamental rules I learned long ago while building and fixing amps:
1) Plan to be wrong about something!
2) If something can move while you're soldering it, it will move and you'll get a bad solder joint
3) While debugging, only try to fix one thing at a time. Otherwise you won't know what fixed the problem and/or created a new one.
4) Just because it's a "simple" circuit inside a little box doesn't mean that you can rush through it

From what I have found with good Fuzz pedals they produce markedly different results with different guitars so you cannot really expect the same sound with a Strat as with a 335.

Apart from the tone produced by the pickups the single coils are usually lower output than the humbuckers so they dont drive the fuzz circuit so hard. The classic fuzz circuit interacts with the guitar electronics - your Strat likely has 250K pots in it and the 335 has 500K. So the with the volume at max the Strat may present about a 6K impedance rising to a maximum of around 60K with the volume at about 2/3rds. The 335 will be maybe 12K to 125K. (This is because if you regard the pickup as a small impedance and just treat it as a short circuit, with the volume controls at half their resistance setting they appear as 2 resistors of half the value of the pot in parallel with each other - 250K /2 = 125K two 125K in parallel = 62.5K. A very rough approximation but I think it gives a close enough idea.)

The are quite a few tweaks for the classic fuzz - you may find a 50K in series with the input (but after the 1M pull down) may increase the impedance seen by the pedal with the Strat to get it to sound more like the 335. You could also try a plain gain boost pedal in front of the fuzz. The 50K partly isolates the feedback circuit around the fuzz amplifier from the effect of the guitar controls so you get a bit more gain. However it will have no effect if you max the Fuzz pot since this bypasses all the feedback to ground through a cap.

Thanks Tark. I had a feeling that the pickups and pot values were part of the equation. Sounds like the '69 Fulltone mods would be worth experimenting with. I'd also like to try a different set of transistors at some point.

Chip

Actually just read your post again and see I made a mistake. I should have said a 50K pot in series. Although a fixed resistor would certainly have some effect.

From your experiences with the 335 and the Strat it is clear that the classic Fuzz does interact with passive guitar electronics quite a bit and not always in ways you might expect!

The notable change when you back off the 335 pots just a little is probably due to the guitars generally higher impedance as I said.
The volume difference with the parallel / series switching on the Strat I can only guess might be due to the way the fuzz reacts to the different harmonic content in the two tones.

A Fuzz face is a really sensitive circuit. The minute differences between the outputs of the single and double coil is enough to change the personality of the sound.

I'm thinking a booster in front of the fuzz with the strat would yield sonic similarities. An LBP for instance??

By the way, I'm a lurker at the Hoffman board and you helped me with a Blues Jr. Thanks for that.
Patrick