I never ride the volume knob on my guitar. Maybe I'm missing out on something by not utilizing that… All these years, should I have been setting up my "normal" sound with my volume knob turned down? Just seems like a trick Jimi and Jimmy figured out based on necessity.
If you have a Strat without a treble bleed and nothing but a cable between your fuzz face and guitar, you can roll down you volume for a beautiful glassy clean tone. It’s what Jimi and Stevie did!
Also, there's a subtle tone shift rolling back the V pot a tiny bit even going straight into an amp... The pickup "wants" a load between it and the junction of the paths to dc ground and an active input.
When you say "put a buffer behind the circuit" does that mean, between the guitar and the fuzz pedal? Is front and back of circuits the opposite of guitar pedal amp signal chain?
Placing a buffer before the Fuzz Face. So if you place any effect pedal that ends with a buffer, as most do, and that is between your guitar and your fuzz face, that's what is being expressed in the video.
Yes. That's what it means. But also... Don't mess with buffers.. The fuzz face has enough gain to run a cable length after. The thing is the fuzz face circuit. Includes your guitar pickup and wiring. Get a Series-Parallel switching wired humbucker in a Junior or something and a Germanium Fuzz Face. You'll thank me later.
i am guessing a Tonebender does not suffer as much either.. I really like the fuzz face but its a pain with this as even the WAH has a buffer and stuffs it, put the WAH after and it sounds terrible
Great explanation, thank you! The thing with the missing volume control cleanup...does that mean adding a potentiometer between the transformer and the fuzz input would simulate this effect? If yes, which value would you recommend? 250k or 500k like in a guitar?
The best reason is the benefits of a reactive load in a fuzz face. The fuzz output from the same humbucker pickup wired series vs parallel.. Say it's a 16k ohm series... The 4 ohm parallel arrangement will react with more fuzz and possibly oscillations enough to need to turn the fuzz pot down. Parallel into a fuzz face will be louder than series. Turning the tone pot back to just before oscillation will cause a treble spike. A single coil at 8k ohm will work nicely but the series of humbuckers does more of a gain drive thing with less fuzz. So certain pickups work better with fuzz. Dearmond foils. Filtertrons and hot humbuckers in Parallel.. (4k ohms is low limit). This entire video is summed up to describing the "Attack" control in the Fuzz Factory. The gate mod and bias mods are more useful.
Yes. Use a DPDT switch. The center on one side is the guitar cable hot. The other center goes to the fuzz. Between one set of posts build the input section that is traditional . Between the other 2 posts build the LRC circuit w the transformer. Be sure to keep the components oriented like they are in each circuit so that the input mates w the same components in the same way.
This is really years and and years of confusing explanations rendered down into 6 minutes of clarity! Thanks!
I subscribed years ago in highschool and now that i'm studying mechanical engineering I feel like i'm finally beginning to understand some of this
Great explanation, thank you and YES want to see more videos like this. Regards.
You just gained a subscriber. I've learned so much from this video. Thank you.
I always thought it was the low input impedance of the FF that brought down the gain when using humbuckers. Thanks for explaining this!
Thanks for the great explanation. Easy to follow. Up the irons!
Great explanation! Great videos. Keep’em coming!
Really interesting analysis. Thanks!
Very nice video, thank you!
What about a JFET into the two germanium transistors? JFETs clean up great.
I never ride the volume knob on my guitar. Maybe I'm missing out on something by not utilizing that… All these years, should I have been setting up my "normal" sound with my volume knob turned down? Just seems like a trick Jimi and Jimmy figured out based on necessity.
If you have a Strat without a treble bleed and nothing but a cable between your fuzz face and guitar, you can roll down you volume for a beautiful glassy clean tone. It’s what Jimi and Stevie did!
Also, there's a subtle tone shift rolling back the V pot a tiny bit even going straight into an amp... The pickup "wants" a load between it and the junction of the paths to dc ground and an active input.
Great content! Can you make a tutorial on whammy preset switch for up and down? I made an extra plug to connect to a preset switcher. Thank you!
When you say "put a buffer behind the circuit" does that mean, between the guitar and the fuzz pedal? Is front and back of circuits the opposite of guitar pedal amp signal chain?
Placing a buffer before the Fuzz Face. So if you place any effect pedal that ends with a buffer, as most do, and that is between your guitar and your fuzz face, that's what is being expressed in the video.
Yes. That's what it means. But also... Don't mess with buffers.. The fuzz face has enough gain to run a cable length after. The thing is the fuzz face circuit. Includes your guitar pickup and wiring.
Get a Series-Parallel switching wired humbucker in a Junior or something and a Germanium Fuzz Face. You'll thank me later.
Helpful
i am guessing a Tonebender does not suffer as much either.. I really like the fuzz face but its a pain with this as even the WAH has a buffer and stuffs it, put the WAH after and it sounds terrible
Great explanation, thank you! The thing with the missing volume control cleanup...does that mean adding a potentiometer between the transformer and the fuzz input would simulate this effect? If yes, which value would you recommend? 250k or 500k like in a guitar?
Yes
The best reason is the benefits of a reactive load in a fuzz face. The fuzz output from the same humbucker pickup wired series vs parallel.. Say it's a 16k ohm series... The 4 ohm parallel arrangement will react with more fuzz and possibly oscillations enough to need to turn the fuzz pot down.
Parallel into a fuzz face will be louder than series. Turning the tone pot back to just before oscillation will cause a treble spike.
A single coil at 8k ohm will work nicely but the series of humbuckers does more of a gain drive thing with less fuzz.
So certain pickups work better with fuzz.
Dearmond foils. Filtertrons and hot humbuckers in Parallel.. (4k ohms is low limit).
This entire video is summed up to describing the "Attack" control in the Fuzz Factory.
The gate mod and bias mods are more useful.
Indeed.
is it possible to wire a transformer to a switch and have a buffer friendly mode that can be toggled on and off?
Yes. Use a DPDT switch. The center on one side is the guitar cable hot. The other center goes to the fuzz. Between one set of posts build the input section that is traditional . Between the other 2 posts build the LRC circuit w the transformer. Be sure to keep the components oriented like they are in each circuit so that the input mates w the same components in the same way.