PSA about Russian d9e germanium diodes - maybe others?

[Sensei Tim]

So I built a Foxx tone machine last week and used d9e germanium diodes instead of 1n34a.

Wired it up and... disappointment.  Very gated, farty sound with very little volume.

Ok.  Must be a solder bridge to ground or something.  I honestly spent about 8-12 hours trying to debug this damn thing.  I finally located source to be the  diodes in the lower right corner connected to the octave switch.  Apparently the bands on these diodes are on the anode, not the cathode as they normally are.

For normal clipping circuits it doesn’t matter but in this case where polarity did matter it was the difference beteeen working and not working.

Just a heads up for those of you using those Russian diodes!  Save yourselves hours of debugging time!

[Mulekicker]

Yep. They are opposite. I've built a few Tone Machines the past couple weeks and I've used closely matched d311's for the octave section and have been happy with the results. I've also used d9e's here (and they sound good) but I have to test a bunch to get a match.

[BlackDeathsquad]

After you got it debugged how did it sound?

[Sensei Tim]

I thought it sounded great.  I’m not really a fuzz person so I can’t really give you more than that.

On Mon, Mar 25, 2019 at 8:59 AM BlackDeathsquad [via Guitar FX Layouts] <[hidden email]> wrote:

After you got it debugged how did it sound?

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[Strassercaster1]

I checked them when they came since i was curious of the forward voltage and noticed they are reveresed made a couple klons  and had no problems. About my 4th Klon build i forgot about the reverse band on them. Very frustrating. I only spend an hour troublshooting . I slept on it and fixed it the next day.

I really like the foxx tone machine . The experience uses a slightly modded one. If you like this the Clean Octave Blend is real cool to. You can add a footswitch and have a nice clean silicon boost

[Marbles]

Oh shit, it makes a difference? Time to open mine up then and check.

When I saw this thread, I thought about my Klom build, but then figured that the way they are placed in the gain stage, it doesn't matter what position they are in, as long as you have one facing one way, and the other facing the other way. Was that a wrong assumption?

[Sensei Tim]

It shouldn’t make a difference for symmetrical clipping.

On Wed, Apr 3, 2019 at 1:22 AM Marbles [via Guitar FX Layouts] <[hidden email]> wrote:

Oh shit, it makes a difference? Time to open mine up then and check.

When I saw this thread, I thought about my Klom build, but then figured that the way they are placed in the gain stage, it doesn't matter what position they are in, as long as you have one facing one way, and the other facing the other way. Was that a wrong assumption?

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[Marbles]

Ah thanks! I started doubting myself :)