Audio Designs / Kimberly Buzz Box

[anders]

Hi, this is a quite heavy and buzzy and really loud germanium fuzz box from the sixties.
Just built it and it works fine, it got some similarities to some japanese buzzy fuzzes and it really cleans up well with the guitar volume knob. Tried several transistors and most Ge's works but to my ears it sounded best with trannys in the hfe 80-100 range with low leakage.

http://www.effectsdatabase.com/model/kimberly/buzzbox



Cheers

[boratto]

Thank you, this one should go to my list. How about the volume?

[anders]

Thanks! It's really loud, with the buzz knob maxed the volume knob is at 9 o clock to reach unity level...by the way the buzz pot is really interesting, it's works kind of a Depth pot just like on the Fuzzrite. At minimum you get a a slightly boosted signal which gradually blends in fuzz. At 10-11 o clock I suddendly get strong octavey and ringmodish tones with the neck pickup. At the end of the sweep it's really dirty with quite a big volume boost, I might stick a 500 k reversed audio taper in there instead.

[anders]

It turns out that the schematic I drew this from is incorrect...well sort of. PJP have made a couple variants of this circuit with different mods. But I can't find a schematic online that shows the stock original  circuit. So I decided to trace it from different gutshots online.

http://ilovefuzz.com/viewtopic.php?f=149&t=37967
http://www.effectsdatabase.com/model/kimberly/buzzbox
http://www.effectsdatabase.com/model/audiodesigns/fuzzound
http://stompboxes.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=16253&p=261560&hilit=kimberly#p261560

It appears that this is the same as Audio Designs Fuzzound. Here is a crappy demo soaked in reverb.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7f-9oRaMeM

I drew a vero layout and it's verified for what it is. It has a quite a massive heavy overdriven fuzz sound with hints of squarewave and with the diodes you get into Harmonic Percolator territory. Quite comressed, dense and trebly. It's very tolerant to transistors, both germaniums and silicons work just fine. In my NPN version I used a 2N2219A silicon in Q1 and a MP38A germanium in Q2. For the diodes I prefred D9K's but most germaniums sounded good in there.