Re: Germanium Transistors, Noise and Leakage

Posted by Beaker on Aug 03, 2016; 12:50pm
URL: http://guitar-fx-layouts.238.s1.nabble.com/Germanium-Transistors-Noise-and-Leakage-tp32320p32329.html

"Thanks for the info. So basically the higher leakage makes it harder to bias correctly, which could lead to more noise?"

No, higher leakage does not necessarily mean more noise.

Read Travis and Zach's posts again, as every point they make is true. You can make generalisations about Ge transistors, but there are few hard and fast rules that apply across the board. This makes selecting transistors tricky, and will always lead to a degree of trial and error, before you hit on the best transistor type for the circuit, and the best combination of gain and leakage.

As Zach points out, you can nail it on one pedal, then build another with the same type, gain and leakage, and have different results, if the second transistor is from a different supplier or batch.

Remember also, that Russian transistors usually read a lower HFE than they sound - if a circuit suggests 105 HFE for example,  a Russian transistor with a HFE of 60 might be a perfect match.

Good suppliers are our friend Maryam at bg-manue and ml electronics in Bulgaria, as well as Orpheus in Bulgaria. Other highly recommended sellers are SOVCOM and bird-SR71 in Ukraine, Elena in Russia and Valtek in Romania.

There are plenty of other sellers in Eastern Europe, some of which I have used, and I have yet to have had a problem with any of them. They all seem reliable so far.