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13th August, 2020 by Dave

Germanium Fuzz Face

Germanium Fuzz Face
13th August, 2020 by Dave

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.

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Rather than rely on some of the Chinese PCB fab houses for all of my builds I’ve started teaching myself how to etch at home. These are the layouts I’ve been using ready for you to give a whirl too.

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