Build Your Own Clone Message Board

Hi All,

Completed my first ever build yesterday and it sounds great. Only issue is the pedal sounds quieter than all of my other pedals, especially if I use any other setting than "full" on the toggle or dial any of the knobs down. Maybe I can take some video and post. For now I've included a few photos I took at various stages of the build. Sorry I don't have any photos of the solder side of the PCB. I can take some but I don't want to dismantle the thing unless I absolutely have to. I triple checked when putting each component in that they were correct but I feel like maybe a capacitor or resisitor is wrong or something? Any input is appreciated. I'll try to get some video. Thanks.

The Classic Fuzz is not a particularly loud pedal, but you should still be able to get unity volume at right around 12 noon on the Level pot with the pedal properly biased and the Fuzz pot set at about 3 o'clock.

Good photos, but we also like to see the solder side of the PCB. But for now let's proceed....

The most common reasons for a lack of output are (1) a misplaced resistor, or (2) a wonky solder joint somewhere. I don't see any resistor mistakes, so I would recommend working through this process first: viewtopic.php?f=9&t=52188

As part of that, trim down protruding wire ends and component leads to the tops of their respective solder joints, and make sure that you don't have solder "bridges" or stray wire strands between adjacent eyelets. Clean up any other questionable junk you see on the board.

If that doesn't clear up the problem, then my next question would be: Do you have access to a multimeter and know how to measure DC voltage with one?

_________________
“My favorite programming language is SOLDER” - Bob Pease (RIP)

My Website * My Musical Gear * My DIY Pedals: Pg.1 - Pg.2

Thank you so much for your reply. I took extra care to trim all my leads and make sure nothing was touching. I also made sure there were no solder bridges. I will go back and double check everything. And yes, I work professionally as an electrician so I own quite a variety of multimeters and can read DC voltage. This has been a fun learning experience.

OK, great! If the pedal still isn't working correctly after your re-inspection, I would recommend getting a set of voltage measurements on the two transistors. Q1 is the transistor closer to the footswitch and Q2 is above it. Here are the voltages I see on my functioning Classic Fuzz:



For Q2, the values shown are for the two extremes of the Bias pot sweep. As you can see, the Bias pot affects the voltage at the collector of the transistor, which is what sets the character of the fuzz tone. Too low loses volume and gets thin and "spitty", and too high will get louder, but loses some treble and fuzziness.

_________________
“My favorite programming language is SOLDER” - Bob Pease (RIP)

My Website * My Musical Gear * My DIY Pedals: Pg.1 - Pg.2

Ok so I checked everything again and it all still looks solid.
Tried reflowing the solder as well. Took voltage measurements on both transistors and my numbers were consistent with yours except on Q2 with the bias turned all the way down I read 6.1V on C. Something else I noticed is that the LED only turns on when I connect my quarter inch cable to the input jack. I tried measuring voltage again with both my cable plugged in and disconnected and sure enough there is no power when the cable is not connected. My first thought was maybe there's an open ground somewhere but I'm not seeing that.

Did you really mean "with the bias turned all the way down" here?? 6.1V is a value I'd expect with the bias pot all the way UP. If it's really that value with the Bias pot full CCW, what is the value with it full CW, i.e. all the way up?


This is per design. By using a stereo input jack and wiring this way, the ground path for the power is through the ring of the input jack and is only completed when a cable is inserted and the ring makes contact with the sleeve of the cable plug. By doing it this way, players who use a 9V battery to power the pedal can save the battery life by just pulling the cable out of the input jack. If you don't use batteries to power your pedals, you can disable this feature by wiring the ring eyelet at the top of the PCB to the sleeve tab of the input jack instead of the ring tab, so that it's connected to the main ground trace of the pedal.

_________________
“My favorite programming language is SOLDER” - Bob Pease (RIP)

My Website * My Musical Gear * My DIY Pedals: Pg.1 - Pg.2

Oops! You're right. My bad. I did mean all the way up, not down. Maybe it's just a really quiet pedal? Haha.

It IS pretty common for people to set fuzz faces all the way up and then use the guitar's volume knob to clean it up. I recalled that this one had a bit more volume, but I just went and plugged mine in, and yeah, I have to turn it pretty much full up, at least on my little practice amp. It may be that everything is working as expected after all.

_________________
Scott

My band, Austin Hollow

Here is a video I made

(I edited your post to embed the video.)

Well, a Muff is definitely going to be capable of a lot more volume than a Fuzz Face. Maybe it's the extra transistor. But what does seem really weird with your fuzz is how the volume seems to swell in. I wonder if that is your phone's microphone (or YouTube's audio settings) compensating for the lower volume and bringing it up? Do you notice that it starts out quiet and then gets a bit louder in real life, or is that just from the video?

_________________
Scott

My band, Austin Hollow

No that is 100% my phone adjusting to audio levels. I think it actually makes everything sound more even so probably not a great example. But yeah I'm starting to think it's just a quiet pedal, which is fine. At least the tone sounds great. And it means I didn't screw anything up! Haha. Thanks for the help.

JHS recently posted a great video on modifying a Dunlop Fuzz Face, and it's worth watching. I'll post it below. One thing he does is replace the volume pot with a slightly higher value so the perceived output is higher. I would recommend this to you, except the BYOC fuzz uses a much lower pot value already (100k vs. 470k/500k). I'm actually not sure of the reason for this, so I don't want to suggest you go changing it. But maybe someone else can chime in about it. And if you wanted to mess around with it, you could try some different values for that pot and see what it does.

_________________
Scott

My band, Austin Hollow

Excellent! Thanks!