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Projects => Build Reports => Topic started by: Aleph Null on March 01, 2021, 05:03:42 PM

Title: Trident Fuzz
Post by: Aleph Null on March 01, 2021, 05:03:42 PM
This circuit was born out of experiments with Tim Escobedo's Triple Fuzz. The heart of that circuit is the non-selective octave tripler (the transistor array shown below). The octave tripler remains mostly intact, but everything around it has changed.

(https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/50992800918_353587bbce_c.jpg) (https://flic.kr/p/2kG4r9J)

(https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/50992800853_ee7d668a19_c.jpg) (https://flic.kr/p/2kG4r8B)

The first opamp stage sets the gain. The 100pF capacitor shaves off just enough high end to keep the hiss down at high gain settings. The transistors form the non-selective octave tripler. This stage creates false harmonics, but doesn't actually distort the signal. Orange diodes to ground do actually distort the signal. The second opamp stage is an active high shelf filter centered at 723Hz with 13dB boost and cut.

(https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/50993512531_e3b461d6e5_c.jpg) (https://flic.kr/p/2kG85FV)

With the gain set below 9 o'clock a subtle sub octave is present and the signal is mostly clean. Between 9 and noon, the false harmonics become increasingly present and the sub octave disappears, but the clean signal is still audible. Above noon, the LEDs start to clip and the signal becomes increasingly saturated. There's a very percussive, klangy attack throughout. This is the only fuzz that I've encountered that sounds good at low fuzz settings.

(https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/50993512506_427e200952_c.jpg) (https://flic.kr/p/2kG85Fu)

Here's my vero layout in case any one else wants to play with this. It's probably not the most efficient layout, but I had to constrain the width to get it to fit in a 1590A.
Title: Re: Trident Fuzz
Post by: jimilee on March 01, 2021, 07:32:52 PM
That looks really great


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Title: Re: Trident Fuzz
Post by: jjjimi84 on March 02, 2021, 11:18:30 AM
Very cool! Thank you for the layout, going to check this one out.