freestompboxes.org

i had one of these, and REALLY dug the fuzz, and had asked if anyone could help me convert the fender fuzz wah circuit to just a fuzz...

gus smalley posted this:



which led to this:



it's even verified... i'd tried a similar layout a while back, but made 2 rookie mistakes.. was missing the 10k resistor going to the + input of the chip, and had b+ going to pin 8, not pin 7. :icon_redface:

so anyways, now it's built and verified.

how's it sound? i REALLY like it. very thick buzzy sustaining distortion, with a buffered clean that can be blended in.
you can use a 5089 or whatever, but i advise to socket the tranny and try a bunch of npn's. to me, it sounded best with an npn ge, REVERSE beta'd. figure that one out. but to my ear, that was the best fuzztone, and the best balance between clean (slightly boosted) and fuzz (seriously fuzzy!!) with the mix pot.

i also added a simple tone pot. i know, big muff or swtc, but i like the way this one sounds better, and it's bonehead simple. a pot and a cap. notice the input to the tone cct is to the wiper... this seemed to also sound better than with output from wiper.

any dang single OA will work fine... 741, 5534,tl061/71 were all tried.
also tried some fets and jfets. if you want a really killer tube like fuzz, try a j201 or similar!! the clean blend kinda sucks with them, but MAN!!
nice, i mean NICE distortion.

anyways... i really diggit... thanks gus once again for helping me out, and if you guys build this, please let me know..

stupid pedal trick will happen eventually. playing too damn much.

cheers jimi!
will whip it up on the breadboard tomorrow.

is all the stuff in Gus' schem stock parts and value?
maybe you have the original fuzz wah schematic?

original caps were 22u apparently.

u used 47u's, and a 100u for the big one. 10u output.

the chip was an earlly *558 variant. since this doesn't use the wah, a 741 is sufficient.

really phat sounding.

mark hammer said if ya added diodes at c1 and c2 you can get octaves out of it. just a thought.

i used bat47 and 1n60 shotke (i don't think it's ge) for clipping.

Thanks for the schematic. Just helped me fix one I got from ebay.

i almost bid on that one. i really like these suckers.

try a 5532 for the opamp... same fuzz, but a little less noise.

I was recently fortunate enough to have one of these gifted to me by my brother. After looking for information on it I noticed that there weren't any gut shots around so I figured that since i have one I'd shoot some pictures just in case someone wants to see them.

It is a nice sounding fuzz circuit, the wah isn't what I think of when I think of a wah but still totally usable. The downside is the pedal is physically massive. Only slightly smaller than a Mini Cooper.

Thanks for posting.
Look at the size of those .1µf caps! There must have been a "sale" on 200 volt caps that week!
If Fender actually manufactured this, the caps would have been taken from their amplifier parts stock I would imagine.

Sprague e-caps are replacements

Could you take direct pcb shot for me with dimensions?

Thanks

I thought the Sprague's looked out of place in there. I haven't seen other pictures of this circuit so I just had their shiny new look and the bit of flix residue on the board to go off of. Also whoever did that also disconnected the power supply jack for whatever reason.

The non electrolytic caps look exactly like the ones I ripped out of my early 70's Bassman 10 so that's a very fair assumtion.

And I will grab my tape measure from work tonight and take a better picture in the sunlight tomorrow when I get home.

Cheers mate. I'm after reworking the board and doing full layout for that. This is why I need it. If you could do whole board and close ups that would be great. Plus the wiring

30D's are my favourite axial caps

sinner wrote:Could you take direct pcb shot for me with dimensions?

Some GIMPing and Inkscaping gives this picture and an estimated 95 x 79 mm board size.
I used the 741 pads to adjust the pic to a proper 0.1" grid. Hope this helps!

It does help. Thanks a million

Sorry it took me a bit to post these. I work some crazy hours and sleep sometimes doesn't always happen. Anyways...the board is 4 inches by 3.25 inches about. The three pots at the top are all 1m linear and the wah part of the dual gang is 10k linear. The volume part of the dual gang was hidden and I'm not the best at putting back together the pinion and gear but I'm not certain if the value really matters. The transistor is marked 2n3392. I took the pictures in sections to get better details. I was going to label where the wires went to but time is short usually. I may be able to do that this weekend.































Let me know if you need anything else

No rush mate. Thanks for all you did already

I'm finishing one project this week and i have another one in works but I try to do as much as possible during next week

I will have few questions more likely so I hope you stick around ; )

I like this little corner of the net. Never had anything to contribute really except for now and to thank you for that excellent Tonebender layout you did. I figure if I have something and it's not already here then I should add it to the mix.

I tend to gift or lose a lot of pedals but I see this Fender sticking around for a long while so whenever you have questions I'll pop it open and see what I can answer. As far as I know the only thing missing on the wiring is the power jack. Not entirely sure why it was removed. It's the Electro Harmonix style 1/8 inch jack and those adaptors aren't exactly hard to find. Every Voodoo power brick or something similar comes with one. Oh well.

Thanks

I'm happy you like my work

Whatever you have there - bring it on. As long as it's old and/or out of proportion

My new website is scheduled to be rebuild (sort of) 1st of May so I'm after new content

Here is a picture of the original transistor that, combined with the replacement of the CA3458 with an MC1458 ("modern" version without breath background), it maintains a sound fuzzy. With other combinations opamp-transistor-led-diodes you can go on territories of distortion.