The Case of the 12 Germanium Fuzzes

[PMowdes]

Stumbled across this interesting vid on youtube

[zombie_rock123]

Urgh. Not that video please. Every time I watch it I hear another fuzz I need to build!

Really respect some people's work, going to all that trouble so folk like me can sit and pick ones to build.

[Travis]

Meh. I don't put much stock into this video. Let me first say that this guy has some amazing gear and is a great player. I've seen some of his other videos which I've really enjoyed.

With that said, if he was using original examples or very well built clones this would be a legit comparison. As it is, it is pretty much completely worthless.

That FZ-1 is not even close to sounding right. The Zonk is not even close to sounding right. The MKI is closer but not great. I pretty much stopped the video there because with those 3 so poorly represented I didn't really care to see more.

Just because part values match a schematic doesn't mean it sounds right. There is clearly a LOT more care that needs to go into transistor selection judging by sounds..

[rocket88]

+1 to what travis said. while joe has some great videos, and has even built some of his own pedals which are modified versions of some others, this video just sucks. it's almost like he just threw the pedals together with schematic values, and  didn't check anything after that.

[PMowdes]

Well I guess that's the lesson to be taken from it.

I've made plenty of pedals which are true to values and layouts posted on the web but not really checked if what i've made sounds anything like what is supposed to.

I had a bunch of breadboards delivered last week so perhaps it's time to start tweeking things to get a more desirable sound.

[zombie_rock123]

Off hand does anyone have any prefered videos of the zonk or fz1? I've read about their temperamental ways on here but never been inclined to whack one together.

[Travis]

Here's a good one for the Zonk. This pedal used to belong to David Main, and is the one that he traced for the schematic that everyone has used subsequently.

http://youtu.be/oJfb0D5wFzU

For the FZ-1 you could just listen to Satisfaction by the Rolling Stones.


These are temperamental if you have plenty of appropriate transistors to use. If you don't then you pretty much have no chance with the stock circuits. You need transistors with leakage to get them to bias up, and they need to be pretty dark sounding to avoid noise and screeching note decay issues. The input cap on the Zonk is 1n, which would normally be extremely bright sounding. If you notice in the video it really isn't too bright sounding. That is all about the transistors.

[zombie_rock123]

That sounds bloody lovely. Gonna have to audition me some transistors on the old breadboard! Thanks Travis.

[cjonesplay]

The thing with germanium transistor fuzzes is that each one needs some sort of fine-tuning to bring out the magic and they almost always benefit from mods in cap sizes/tone pots/darlington pairs, etc...

I have found stated leakages and gains online to be mostly unhelpful, and in the end it just takes tons of experimentation and LOTS of transistors in a variety of gains/leaks to make a pedal special (especially the Buzzarounds and 2-transistor ones). Joe's designs when he made this video is clearly not up to par with what he is capable of and if he did it again I bet he would he would have much better examples to use.

As always, when trying to make a design sound like the original you need to remember that many of the originals don't even sound like the originals, and that in many cases with a good ear and patience you can make all of these designs sound better than the originals. Of course that is subjective, but so is this entire thread and all of Germania itself;)