This is a vintage inspired Fuzz Face using a positive ground layout, Germanium transistors and retro looking components.
Board Artwork
Print size: 1.9 x 0.8 inches at 600dpi
There are more efficient layouts of a Fuzz Face but this one’s been designed with a few specific requirements.
- It needs to fit in a 1590B enclosure
- I wanted to have a bit of a vintage, tagboard feel to it with lots of vertically aligned components
- I wanted it to be accepting of a range of Ge transistors, no matter their shape or size
- I wanted it to fit some chunky, 1/2W retro looking resistors
Component Layout
First thing to note is that this is a positive ground circuit – remember this when powering it, or couple it with a handy voltage inverter.
- C1 – 22uF electrolytic
- C2 – 2.2uF electrolytic
- R1 – 100K resistor
- R2 – 33K resistor
- R3 – 470Ω resistor
- C3 & C4 – these are smoothing capacitors (C3 on Q1 and C4 on Q2) and can help with noisy or oscillating transistors when the Fuzz control is maxed. They can, however, strip some treble so it’s up to you if you add them or leave them out. I used 47pF ceramics.
- C5 – 10nF axial capacitor
- BIAS – 10K skeleton trimmer (20K if you want more range). I used one of these old-school looking trimmers which matches the pad spacing on the board and adds to the overall aesthetic.
- Q1 & Q2 – Germanium PNP transistors
- Fuzz – 1K Linear potentiometer
- Volume – 500K Log potentiometer
When connecting everything up, Fuzz 1 and Volume 1 both go to ground and Volume 2 goes to the output.
