J201 alternative

[TheMajor]

Hi, first of all. Thats a really great blog, I stumbled across it last week and now I want to build some of the wampler clones. Unfortunatly its hard to get J201 here in europe. I would like to order from the following shop cause I buy all the other parts there (enclosure, switches, pots etc) Can any of these following JFETs be used as a dircect replacement for J201 (minor changes like like resistor values and different pinouts arent a problem)
http://www.musikding.de/Aktive-Bauteile/Transistoren/FET:::307_60_61.html

[Olav]

J201 can be ordered from Newtone Online. http://www.newtone-online.nl/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=134 

[TheMajor]

Thanks, I just stumbled over futurlec, they only charge 0,20 USD for one. Guess I am going to order a pack of 100. In my local electronic store they are 1,50 € each, plus 7€ shipping.

[alex.s]

I've used 2N5457s in place of J201s before. Jfets do tend to need a bit of attention when it comes to biasing and swapping the J201s will be a similar affair. Expect playing a little with a trimpot either way to make sure all is in place!

[induction]

If you want to accurately clone the Wampler pedals, I recommend you use the J201's and don't mess with trimmers.  Instead, breadboard the circuit (or just the jfet stages) with the resistor values as given. Then swap out J201's until you find the ones that bias correctly, and use them in your build.  (It's good that you're considering buying 100 of them, they have a lot of variation.)  If you adjust the bias by swapping resistors or using a trimmer, you will change the gain of the jfet stages, and the circuit won't sound quite the same as the original.

[Ross]

I've heard rumors that Futurlec's JFETs are counterfeits.

[Madferret]

I think I saw a post by Mark about supposed JFET counterfeiting. If I remember correctly the gist of it was that it wasn't going to be financially viable for anyone to set up production but that it was possible that someone had managed to get hold of a batch of seconds that weren't ever meant to be released for sale.  I guess with a lot of JFETs coming to the end of their productions, people are going to want to sell anything to make a huge profit. Either way it's good to know that Futurlec's are suspect, cheers for the heads up dude.

[TheMajor]

I have googled a bit and there are a lot of bad reviews of futurlec. What are your experiences ?

I found a german supplier of J201s, the charge 3 times as much as futurlec but at least they seem to be reliable. They also have BF245 which seem to be close to the specs of J201s. Could I use those instead ?

Edit: Oh, I see they also have B170 and 2N5457. At least the 2N5457 can be used as J201 replacement right ?

[alltrax74]

LMAO I just orderd 50 from futurlec yesterday...

[GoranP]

They may still be ok and quite useful. Depends on your use for it... in gain stages they are probably ok even if a bit out of spec?