Dunlop - JBF-3 Joe Bonamassa Fuzz Face  [schematic]

All about modern commercial stompbox circuits from Electro Harmonix over MXR, Boss and Ibanez into the nineties.
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Seiche
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Post by Seiche »

Ghandi wrote:I just found this article where Jeorge talks about the Hendrix, Bonamassa and Johnson fuzz.
He says that the Hendrix fuzz is biased at 6V on the collector of Q2,
Bonamassa's is biased at 4,5 at C of Q2
and he Johnson is, as we know, biased even lower.
I realise nobody ever posted actual values of a stock unit.

well someone on TGP did and got this:
Q1C: 0.91v
Q2C: 6.59v

tried these in my build and it gets louder and fuller. with a delay behind it, it sounds pretty good.

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Post by sinner »

Seiche wrote:
Ghandi wrote:I just found this article where Jeorge talks about the Hendrix, Bonamassa and Johnson fuzz.
He says that the Hendrix fuzz is biased at 6V on the collector of Q2,
Bonamassa's is biased at 4,5 at C of Q2
and he Johnson is, as we know, biased even lower.
I realise nobody ever posted actual values of a stock unit.

well someone on TGP did and got this:
Q1C: 0.91v
Q2C: 6.59v

tried these in my build and it gets louder and fuller. with a delay behind it, it sounds pretty good.
Weird...

Q1 bias is half way between values typical for silicon and germanium, and Q2 is higher than silicon Hendrix Sig?

I say - fuckers at TGP can't use DDM, or connected it to 18VDC for bigger headroom :)

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Post by Seiche »

sinner wrote:Weird...

Q1 bias is half way between values typical for silicon and germanium, and Q2 is higher than silicon Hendrix Sig?
yeah that's exactly what I thought. Sounds pretty good though.

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Post by sinner »

sinner wrote:I did this layout with external bipolar power supply (not sure about the wiring, but I think it should work), as I like my power bank, and hate batteries.

I hope you enjoy it.

Odd Q pinout, as I did it for funky lil russian transistors I have (no leakage, small package, right gains), I don't remember the name of them, I don't have them here with me, I think it was Culture Jam who also is using them

The rest of the text is copy and paste from JH-F1 tread ;)
I was inspired by EW's perfboard fuzzface layouts he done years ago. I just simply added few components as per schematic, still a lot of vintage charm and vibe. No trimmers, it's easy to set fixed bias, we're not going into mass production, do we?

My layouts in this tread are shit!!! 2u2 cap is grounded, wrong pinout for Q's...

Updated file is here http://www.turretboard.org/?p=1642

I'll fix it here as soon as I get back on my PC (whensday I suppose)

I'm sorry lads

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Post by Shankar017 »

Noobie question.
Is it me or is this one of the more polite fuzz faces out there? It's cus of the germaniums right? Can I squeeze a little more oomph outta this thing by using the equivalent silicon trannies?

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Post by sinner »

Try it, it wont explode...

BTW, layout at t.org is still shit... My fault, I was trying to correct it having 30 minutes to train...

I'm out for couple of days, so it have to stay like that till I'll back...

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Seiche
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Post by Seiche »

Shankar017 wrote:Noobie question.
Is it me or is this one of the more polite fuzz faces out there? It's cus of the germaniums right? Can I squeeze a little more oomph outta this thing by using the equivalent silicon trannies?
tried this the other day with a couple of 2n5087s i had. definitely more aggressive and bright. could be worth trying out different transistors but i didn't have any other pnp at hand. The ones I had were both in the 500-600 range.
Maybe look into the eric johnson fuzz face, which is discussed in another thread here?

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Post by Shankar017 »

Seiche wrote:
Shankar017 wrote:Noobie question.
Is it me or is this one of the more polite fuzz faces out there? It's cus of the germaniums right? Can I squeeze a little more oomph outta this thing by using the equivalent silicon trannies?
tried this the other day with a couple of 2n5087s i had. definitely more aggressive and bright. could be worth trying out different transistors but i didn't have any other pnp at hand. The ones I had were both in the 500-600 range.
Maybe look into the eric johnson fuzz face, which is discussed in another thread here?
Nah, I like this pedal better. Seems more transparent. Gonna experiment with some higher gain germs and silicone equivalents this weekend. May leave it stock though, apparently bonamassa intended this fuzz to work well with his humbuckers which I also use. And all the reviews I've seen use single coils except his own demo of it which I really liked.

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Post by Seiche »

Shankar017 wrote:Nah, I like this pedal better. Seems more transparent.
hm, are you talking about clips or have you actually built both? The EJFF has a different bias than the JBFF. (3.2v vs 5v or higher).
Shankar017 wrote:Gonna experiment with some higher gain germs and silicone equivalents this weekend. May leave it stock though, apparently bonamassa intended this fuzz to work well with his humbuckers which I also use. And all the reviews I've seen use single coils except his own demo of it which I really liked.
Yeah I use it with humbuckers and p-90s and it's got plenty of bite imho. There is not much that makes this circuit unique, except for the use of russian germs in a commercial FF.

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Post by Chris Brown »

sinner wrote:
Seiche wrote:
Ghandi wrote:I just found this article where Jeorge talks about the Hendrix, Bonamassa and Johnson fuzz.
He says that the Hendrix fuzz is biased at 6V on the collector of Q2,
Bonamassa's is biased at 4,5 at C of Q2
and he Johnson is, as we know, biased even lower.
I realise nobody ever posted actual values of a stock unit.

well someone on TGP did and got this:
Q1C: 0.91v
Q2C: 6.59v

tried these in my build and it gets louder and fuller. with a delay behind it, it sounds pretty good.
Weird...

Q1 bias is half way between values typical for silicon and germanium, and Q2 is higher than silicon Hendrix Sig?

I say - fuckers at TGP can't use DDM, or connected it to 18VDC for bigger headroom :)

not totally weird... with really low hfe q1 I get .75 or .8v on the collector... usually makes for a great sounding fuzz face...

with that high q1c voltage... if vr1+20k is anywhere near the standard 33k then I'm guessing q1 is low like 40-60 hfe but that's pure conjecture.

for us to really know what's going on someone needs to pull the transistors and properly measure them

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Post by Seiche »

yeah, these voltages work and sound good.

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Post by johnnyg »

Ghandi wrote:just found this pic in the offical dunlop video of joe's personal fuzz:
Bildschirmfoto 2012-03-12 um 09.52.46.png
a few different resistor values and some other germanium trannys!

cheers
ghandi
The transistors look like Dunlop's own 'nkt 275' they use in their regular, red fuzz face.
Yet to break through the Space Charge

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Post by bancika »

I bought 20 of each mp39b and it308b and I'm trying to measure gain and leakage using RGs method. For mp39b it worked fine, all measured gains 30-45 and leakage 100-150uA. However, I can't figure out it308b. It's different pinout (ECB instead of EBC), so I swapped B and C legs and measured a few. All measure leakages around 10uA which is much less than mp39b, but what worries is that all measure gain around 30. It's supposed to be over 60-70. What am I doing wrong? My battery is 9.3V. I measure 9V at the base and about 0.3V at the collector.
Thanks!
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Post by Chris Brown »

bancika wrote:I bought 20 of each mp39b and it308b and I'm trying to measure gain and leakage using RGs method. For mp39b it worked fine, all measured gains 30-45 and leakage 100-150uA. However, I can't figure out it308b. It's different pinout (ECB instead of EBC), so I swapped B and C legs and measured a few. All measure leakages around 10uA which is much less than mp39b, but what worries is that all measure gain around 30. It's supposed to be over 60-70. What am I doing wrong? My battery is 9.3V. I measure 9V at the base and about 0.3V at the collector.
Thanks!
I've been through a lot of it308b and most of the ones I've seen are 30-50 hfe with the occasional 60ish... even the low gain Qs make nice fuzz.

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Post by bancika »

I realized what's the problem, the actual transistor in JB fuzz is IT308V , not B. V cyrilic looks like B, so someone spelled is as IT308B and I bought it :) I should've known better, default alphabet in my country is cyrilic too :)
thanks!
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Post by sinner »

I'm not sure when, but JBF3B was introduced

List of the changes:
- the color was shifted to black
- new marketing add created
- current production JB Sig unit have true bypass (actually always had, but it still sounds nice to underline it)



http://www.jimdunlop.com/product/JBF3B- ... -Fuzz-Face

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Post by Seiche »

sinner wrote:I'm not sure when, but JBF3B was introduced

List of the changes:
- the color was shifted to black
I think that's the only difference. B for black.

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Post by DrNomis »

Shankar017 wrote:Noobie question.
Is it me or is this one of the more polite fuzz faces out there? It's cus of the germaniums right? Can I squeeze a little more oomph outta this thing by using the equivalent silicon trannies?

Germanium transistor Fuzz Faces tend to be less gainy, ie more polite, compared to the silicon ones, and the Russian transistors used in the Joe Bonamassa Fuzz Face tend to be low-gainers, this is not necessarily a bad thing mind you, since it means that the pedal works better with Humbucking pickups, at least that's my theory anyway..... :thumbsup
Genius is not all about 99% perspiration, and 1% inspiration - sometimes the solution is staring you right in the face.-Frequencycentral.

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Post by JEM »

Hi all, sorry to disagree with you Bancika.
But the picture that hung Tonetweaker companion is perfectly written in Cyrillic reads 1T308B if you look at the datasheet to publish on the front page of the transistor that there are three versions the terninada in A with a gain of 25-75, the model b with 50-120 and models
1T308B should be between 80-150.
I searched for information about the 1T308V and in any case is similar to that model B.
Which leads me to assume that the transistors that were of poor quality conseguistes or worse, labeled wrong.

Regards


PS: Sorry for my writing, unfortunately I do not fight well in English and use a translator.

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Post by copperheadroads »

Any one know anything about the trimpots ? & I'm wondering if I could comon blue trimpot

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