I built a fuzz pedal for my guitar using parts from an old, off-brand Nintendo accessory called the "Video Shooter" and a broken Fender Frontman amplifier. The pedal is based on the Bazz Fuss, which is a simple fuzz circuit that is easy to modify. I wanted to use parts from the Nintendo accessory as much as possible, so I designed the circuit around the accessory's enclosure and the S9014 transistors I found inside. One S9014 did not put out enough gain to work as a guitar effect, so, after reading this forum thread, I joined two transistors into what is called a "Darlington transistor". The happy result was sufficient gain and a very well-behaved fuzz pedal. Unlike some other Bazz Fuss derivatives I have encountered, it doesn't fizzle or sputter when connected to a guitar with high-impedance pickups and or when I roll off the volume on the guitar. Its gain is moderate. I call it the "Video Fuzz" in honor of the NES accessory.
Video Shooter Fuzz Schematic |
This is the fuzz circuit by itself, minus the 50k Ohm pot:
Hand-Soldered, Point-to-Point Wiring! |
And here are some sound clips: (1), (2). Interestingly, when I was first wiring a Bazz Fuss circuit, I connected the collector and the pot to the negative end of a battery but not to ground and the resulting circuit made no distortion and behaved like a buffer.
7 comments:
I made one today and it sounds pretty cool, it also acts like a gate XD
I wonder why it acts like a gate. Did you use the same schematic, or are there differences? I get a little bit of a gated fuzz effect from my pedal when I turn my guitar's volume down, but not much.
yeah its like a gated fuzz when I turn down the volume a bit on my guitar, its a cool feature I think
Is that a 3.3 if non polarized cap at the input?
It's 3.3 microfarads. The capacitor I used is polar, but I don't think it matters whether the capacitor is polarized or not.
can this circuit run on 5vdc?
Yes, this circuit can run on 5vdc; I tried it. There is less volume, but it sounds close to what it sounds like at 9vdc. It also works at 18vdc.
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