[sdiy] Mixing a Clipped fuzz-signal and source signal question

[Antti Huovilainen]

On Mon, 29 Oct 2001 media at mail1.nai.net wrote:

> Fuzz Faces are like snowflakes.  It's a simple circuit that is dependent on
> a single transistor for most of its sound.  They built them with a number

Actually two germanium (important!) transistors. They're reported to
sound good if both have gains in the range of 100 or so. Fulltone clones
have germanium transistors in the spec, original ones usually don't and
thus only one in fifty or so of the originals sounds really good.
I've built one (really simple as long as you can get hold of some 20
germanium transistors so you can find two that fit the specs) and it
sounds very good on my Telecaster (works fine on a friend's DeArmond too),
as long as you obey the rules. Fuzzface is NOTHING like other distortions
(in good and bad). http://www.geofex.com has a thorough analysis of the
circuit and instructions for matching the transistors.

> >or are there some unforseen side effects of mixing the original sine on the
> >resultant squarewaves of the fuzz like a cancellation of the whole effect?
> 
> People do it all the time -- it's not like your signal would disappear.

You'll lose all top-end if you have fuzzface connected directly to your
guitar/bass as the source impedance is very low (don't fix it, it sounds
a lot better if you don't buffer the input). Other than that, it should
work.

Antti

"If you don't eat yer meat, you can't have any pudding!
 How can you have any pudding if you don't eat yer meat!?"
   - Roger Waters