# Npd!



## sulphur (Jun 2, 2011)

Woo hoo, I just recieved my Storm Surge from Jeff at Maritime Analog!
This has been the fuzz that I've been looking for, at last!

Previously, my VFE Fiery Red Horse was as close as I could get.
I was looking for a sputtery, spitty fuzz with lots of sustain.
The FRH would do sputtery, but you had to cut the power, then it lost the sustain.

The Storm Surge has it all.
Dime out the attack and it's thick sputtery goodness, with endless sustain. Perfect!
The clarity is retained in a chord, or playing higher notes.

It even stacks well with my other dirt, to push it off the deep end.

Another great build from Jeff. This ends my fuzz search!


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## hardasmum (Apr 23, 2008)

Congrats. I'll have to check out some demos.


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## Jeff B. (Feb 20, 2010)

I'm very pleased to hear you're happy with it. I know you've gone through a lot of different fuzz pedals trying to find the one for you and I consider it a compliment that you picked mine. 
That one is a favorite of mine too.


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## sulphur (Jun 2, 2011)

I've found that a lot of other fuzzi that I've tried have turned out to be more of a distortion pedal than anything.
Perhaps I'm using it the wrong way, just on the clean channel, as opposed to pushing an already distorted amp.

I did/do like your Firing Line too Jeff, and the SSB for that matter,
it's just that this pedal does it all in spades.
It makes me want to play more, isn't that what it's all about.

I know that I asked about the internal trim pots in a pm Jeff,
but could you be more specific about them, from left to right, if possible?

Thank you Jeff for an outstanding pedal, I'm very pleased. 8)


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## Jeff B. (Feb 20, 2010)

sulphur said:


> I've found that a lot of other fuzzi that I've tried have turned out to be more of a distortion pedal than anything.
> Perhaps I'm using it the wrong way, just on the clean channel, as opposed to pushing an already distorted amp.
> 
> I did/do like your Firing Line too Jeff, and the SSB for that matter,
> ...


From left to right the bias controls are Q2, Q1, Q3 where Q means transistor.
I set them by ear with the Attack control up all the way while listening to how the notes decay and how long it sustains before it trails off into decay.
The changes can be very subtle when adjusting them but they are noticeable if you listen carefully.


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

Despite having a few drawers full of GE transistors, I've built very few things with them (though I finally got a Tonebender Mk III working the other day and it is a really sweet little unit). One of the things I do see is that they are fussy little buggers when it comes to temperature. Do you find that the bias trimpots you use need adjustment with temperature changes, or are the trimpots the sort of things that make the pedal more _resilient_ to temperature changes.

It's funny, you hear about players having to go through a whack of Fuzz Faces to "find a good one". Sometimes I wonder if that isn't just because the pedal was built and adjusted in one climate, and there they are sweating it out in Houston or New Orleans trying them out. It may not be that the pedal "isn't a good one"; it may just be they're in the wrong damn city.


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## sulphur (Jun 2, 2011)

So what is the deal with the GE transistors, 
is that what I've heard of guys putting their fuzz in the freezer?

Do the transistors work better cold?

Is this a old wives tales?


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## sulphur (Jun 2, 2011)

I'd ordered Jeffs other model fuzzi,
to see if I was a germanium or silicon lover.

Turns out, the Firing Line (germanium) won me over.
I do find it closer to a distortion, into a high gain.
It can get somewhat fuzzy when dimed,
just not as gritty and grimey as the Storm Surge.

The Firing Line made its way onto my bass board, love it with the bass.


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## Jeff B. (Feb 20, 2010)

The others do tend to sound like distortions, I've noticed that as well. More smooth and crunchy than fuzzy and buzzy. 

Germanium transistors can be a real pain in the ass to deal with especially the old ones made in the UK and USA. 
They can be very difficult to obtain depending on the type and you have to test each one before you use it and they are temperature sensitive which will cause the bias voltage to drift and you usually have to test them in a test circuit to see how they sound because even if passes the gain and leakage test it can still sound like ass sometimes. 
A lot of them can be unusable as well which you don't find out until after you buy and test them so it can get expensive. 
I generally use Russian germanium transistors because it fixes all of the above issues and I have better things to do than try to source old, expensive and time consuming parts. If I come across some old mojo transistors then great, because it's fun to go old school sometimes, but I don't go intentionally looking for them, most lots of the vintage stuff has been picked several times over and a lot that is left over is junk. The Russian parts are easy to get and inexpensive, sound great, very stable and incredibly accurate and usable. Out of the last 400 Russian germaniums I've tested maybe 2 or 3 were junk and the gain ranges were almost identical on all of them. Dunlop has gotten wise to this and started putting them in Fuzz Faces like Joe Bonamassa version for example.
The UK and USA made CV____ (aka Military Spec) series ones are generally quite good though and easy to work with as they had tighter tolerances on them during manufacturing. I like using these too and they're still fairly simple to obtain. I put bias controls in anything I make with germanium transistors just in case (or when) they need adjustment and it makes it easier for me to make them.

Putting it in the freezer would change it's bias point and sound but only until it warmed back up again which wouldn't take long. It depends on the circuit the transistors are used in as well as some circuits are very forgiving of temperature changes so you won't notice a difference. The ones that generally only have a small voltage window of the "correct" bias is where you'll notice it more with the temperature, the Fuzz Face circuit is an example of this.


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## sulphur (Jun 2, 2011)

Thanks for the info Jeff.

I think that it was in here, probably Mark, saying that even when testing these germanium transistors,
the heat from your fingers could skew the readings.
I wasn't sure of the freezer method, I thought that it was a myth. 

Yes, I agree that the first two fuzz I got off of you were a smoother, crunchier type of fuzz.


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

Thanks for the feedback. Somebody sent me a bunch of Russian "flying saucer" Ge transistors a while back. I'll have to give them a go.

And yeah, the "freezer thing" is not so much that they would "work better", but that the bias setting it was adjusted to would still be valid for a while. There ARE ways to provide a circuit where the bias is yoked to temperature sensitive components that would dynamically adjust the bias to keep it appropriate at all working temperatures....but that would make it a noticeably more complex circuit. Somebody posted a self-biasing Fuzz Face circuit a while back that apparently worked well. I can pop it to you if you want.

Stable valid bias voltages play a much bigger role than many players often realize. Take for example the venerable MXR Phase 90, and all its clones. The FETs used to provide variable resistances in that phaser need a stable bias voltage applied to them in order to sweep appropriately. Traditionally, if the needed bias for a FET was, say 3 volts, the circuit would simply divide down the 9v supply voltage to 1/3 via something like a 56k/27k fixed resistor pair, or a trimpot. But what happens when the battery voltage starts to drop, or if the user provides a 12V adaptor? What MXR did was insert a 5.1V zener diode so that the trimpot used to adjust the bias would never see more than 5.1V at its input, and divided down that VERY stable 5.1V. The power supplied to the audio chips might drop from 9.6V on a fresh alkaline, to 9 to 8v, but the FETs would always get a very stable bias voltage derived from that 5.1V. By the time the battery had dropped down to the point where the zener couldn't do its job, the rest of the circuit wouldn't work anyway. This allowed MXR to tweak the FETs for optimum functioning, and never have to worry about the bias being wrong or drifting.

The same thing happened when Panasonic changed their delay chips from the MN300x series to the MN320x series. BBD chips also need a bias voltage to run properly, and if you're getting your bias from an ever-changing battery supply, simply dividing down a moving target won't cut it. So Panasonic redesigned the BBDs to be able to run off 5V. That allows designers to put together a delay pedal that uses 9V from the battery, but drops the 9V down to 5V, via a cheap 3-pin regulator, to power the delay chips. Those 3pin regulators always need to see 2V more at their input than they provide at their output, so the regulator needed to see at least 7V in order to provide 5V. That's fine, since by the time a 9V battery has dropped to 7V, there isn't enough juice left to run much of anything. The pedal would derive the needed bias voltage for the delay chipo from that ultra-stable regulated 5V source.


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## sulphur (Jun 2, 2011)

Informative post, as always Mark. Thanks.

This forum is lucky to have guys like yourself and Jeff that are willing to share your vast knowledge.

I'm assuming that you're addressing Jeff about the FF curcuit.
It might as well be in Greek if you were to send it to me. 8P


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

Thanks. Much appreciated. We're lucky to have even more generous folks who taught us. We're just holding the plate of cookies that was passed to us, taking one, and passing it on.


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## sulphur (Jun 2, 2011)

I'd been thinking about that, in fact.

Were you guys showed first hand and taught about all thing electrical?
Did you take a course? Just reading about it in text books?

My thoughts, are if someone shows you in person, it'd be easier to pick it up.
I glaze over looking at a schematic, it's a foriegn language to me.


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## Jeff B. (Feb 20, 2010)

I would love a copy of that Mark, thanks. I think I may have seen it before but my copy has long since been lost somewhere between several hard drives and binders full of schematics.

That's a very accurate analogy Mark. 

I have no formal training in electronics, I'm entirely self taught. Having gear and having money were mutually exclusive and I could never afford to buy hardly any pedals used or otherwise so I decided to build my own. I leaned to solder with a wood burning iron while scavenging parts from the circuit boards of destroyed electronics some of which were things that I broke and some that I found outside like the half of a cash register I found in a ditch by the railroad tracks one day and saved up enough money from my paper route to order a copy of Anderton's Electronic Projects for Musicians and a small parts order from Mouser Electronics, this was when the Canadian dollar was only worth about 60 cents to the US dollar so this was quite expensive for a teenager. I had a relative that owned a PCB and electronics business in Ontario who sent me some blank copper clad board and I bought some etchant and a resist pen at Radio Shack and tried making some hand drawn circuit boards. 

Everything I know I've learned by helping myself to some of the cookies off of the plate. Bakers such as Mark, R.G. Keen, Justin, Philpot, Jack Orman, Craig Anderton and many others gave me helpful recipes and baking instructions. Information and schematics were hard to come by when I started which was around the mid 1990's. I had no computer at home so I found and printed off whatever I could find on my high school's computers, which wasn't much due to the 1-2 punch of dial-up internet and a dot-matrix printer. The library will likely have a decent selection of books as well. Delton T. Horn's books are also a good place to start and the library will probably have them.

It's really simple now to get into the hobby now with the enormous amount of information, forums, kits, pcb's, parts etc. 
You would probably really enjoy it Sulphur, be forewarned though it is an enormously addicting hobby, once you start building your own gear there is no going back.
I can send some parts, schematic, parts layout and a PCB for a fuzz face circuit your way if you want to give it a try. I would be happy to help with any questions you might have.
Schematics aren't too bad to read as long as you start off small, understand the basics of a simple transistor circuit like a rangemaster then move up to something like a fuzz face eventually you'll work your way up to op-amp and jfet circuits and be able to see the schematic for what it is, just a bunch of circuit blocks put together. Then even the most complicated schematic isn't that intimidating. "There is the gain section, a buffer section, a volume control, those parts filter this etc."


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## sulphur (Jun 2, 2011)

I checked your site Jeff and I thought that you were going to have kits available through there, no?
I didn't see them if they were there.

I really would like to get into this, if not just for my own enjoyment, 
as well as pawning them off on my buddies. 8)

So which should I start with? The Rangemaster is a boost?
I could try the FF too, it'll definitely have to be a gift, once assembled.


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## Jeff B. (Feb 20, 2010)

sulphur said:


> I checked your site Jeff and I thought that you were going to have kits available through there, no?
> I didn't see them if they were there.
> 
> I really would like to get into this, if not just for my own enjoyment,
> ...


 I had to put that part of the business on the back burner at least for now and just focus on completed pedals until I get that lineup completed, stabilized and where I want it.
Once that happens (probably around fall) I'll be able to re-evaluate the kits and parts side of it and give it the attention that it deserves if I decide to go forward with it.
I always have everything around to make one up for you though if you want. I probably have the stuff for a Rangemaster too like the one in R.G.'s article below.

A basic Rangemaster can be easily built on a terminal strip and powered with a battery. 
R.G. Keen has some good reading and directions on it. 
http://www.geofex.com/article_folders/rangemaster/drm.htm


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

Kits tend to beg more end-user support request than completed products do, so if one has a small operation, best to stay away from kits, rather than frustrate those whose needs you can't satisfy.

Like Jeff, I learned by osmosis, and learned because gear-funds were largely unavailable. I was fortunate enough to be near places that provided me with cheap parts (Active Surplus, Arkon) and also had lab techs to help me out, and tech labs to use.

A lot of us worship at the altar of Craig Anderton, Delton Horn, Robert Penfold, John Simonton, and others who contributed projects in the 70's and early 80's. There were more electronics magazines available at that time, and the articles almost always had a what-part-does-what walkthrough. I recommend checking out your local library to see if they have back issues of Radio Electronics, Popular Electronics, or Electronics Today on microfiche.

Ah, yes, resist pens (well, Sharpies, actually) and copper board. One of my most treasured possessions for years was a spring-loaded centre punch. I'd photocopy the PCB layout from the magazine, or an actual PCB from a functioning pedal, tape it to the board, and pop dimples into the board with my center-punch wherever there was a pad, and then just join the dots. Afer a while, I got "fancy" and would use radio Shack rub-on transfers and Letraset tape to provide a crisper pattern.

I experienced a HUGE upswing in my knowledge when the web kicked in and people would post schematics and discuss them. Prior to that, it was the few people you happened to know, books, and magazine articles. Once I was able to amass binders full of fuzz or wah or chorus or VCO circuits, and flip through them to compare what the circuit differences were and what they did, it was like moving from Grade 6 to grad school. It's still my preferred "reading material". The immense generosity of the many people who really ARE electronic engineers has leveraged all of that casually-absorbed information. It's quite something to have on-line or off-line chats with not only RG Keen or Jack Orman, but with Zach Vex, Ton Barmentloo (an independent designer who designed a wad of stuff for EHX, like the Flanger Hoax, Pulsar, Tube Zipper, Wiggler, Worm, and many others), and master guitar/pickup maker Rick Turner.


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## Jeff B. (Feb 20, 2010)

mhammer said:


> Kits tend to beg more end-user support request than completed products do, so if one has a small operation, best to stay away from kits, rather than frustrate those whose needs you can't satisfy.


Exactly. 
I couldn't even get enough spare time to finish the detailed instructions let alone take care of what would have had to be the large scale support side of it with email's and a forum in addition to trying to work on new stuff so I pulled the plug on it a while back, I'm only one person and was spreading myself too thin. Something had to give and it ended up having to be that, at least for now. 

Anderton's choice of op-amps drove me crazy back then. I think they were kind of obscure even back when the book was published. I never really got any of the projects finished as a result. 
Thankfully there are redrawn layouts for most of his projects online now with common op-amps and Small Bear stocks the obscure parts so it's not the problem it once was. Steve at Small Bear makes everyone's lives a whole lot easier. I made a digital copy of my soundsheet that came with EPFM. If anyone has the book is missing theirs and needs a copy let me know and I'll email it to you.


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## sulphur (Jun 2, 2011)

Ya, I can see the kits taking a big bite out of your time, 
when you include the support after the sale.

There's a few sites with existing kits now, something I'll look into.


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

Jeff B. said:


> Exactly.
> Anderton's choice of op-amps drove me crazy back then. I think they were kind of obscure even back when the book was published. I never really got any of the projects finished as a result.


For whatever reason, I was always able to locate the chips in Toronto, but that was the late 70's...when Electro-Sonic carried CLM6000 opto-isolators. Anderton appeared to do a lot of his sourcing through Bill Godbout Electronics in the Bay/Berkeley area. When I visited Berkeley in 2008 I dropped into one of the few electronics places there, about a 10min walk from UC Berkeley. They had a lot of oddball stuff left over from the old days there, including - wonder of wonders - _white rub-on lettering. _I can finally use dark-painted chassis now!



> Thankfully there are redrawn layouts for most of his projects online now with common op-amps and Small Bear stocks the obscure parts so it's not the problem it once was. Steve at Small Bear makes everyone's lives a whole lot easier. I made a digital copy of my soundsheet that came with EPFM. If anyone has the book is missing theirs and needs a copy let me know and I'll email it to you.


Steve is such a sweetie, it's hard to know where to start. That he continues to have allegiance to hobbyists when so much of his volume business is with commercial clients (where do you think all those boutique guys get their coloured knobs and powder-coated chassis from?) is a testament to his integrity. Steve and his wife stayed with us back in October and invited us down to Brooklyn to stay with them. For me, it would be an absolute treat to send the wife and son off to explore NYC and spend the time in the store with Steve filling out orders, going "Hey, I know that guy!". I'm a very very sick man.

I got my copies of both EPFM I and II from the library (and spent a small fortune photocopying them) so I never got to hear the soundsheet. (I may take you up on that offer. Swap you a DVD packed with schems for it!) The "replacement layouts" are available at General Guitar Gadgets. While they are accurate, I have to say that, for all his many virtues and other skills, Craig's layout skills were never all that wonderful, and were more compatible with frac-rack than Hammond chassis. He also never really routed pads for leads to pots and switches all that sensibly. The re-draws are almost every bit as space-consuming. One day, hopefully someone will re-re-draw some of them and avail themselves of such modern innovations as smaller radial caps, vertically-oriented resistors, SIPs, charge-pumps (for things needing bipolar supplies) and running the pads for all the pots to the same PCB edge.


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## Jeff B. (Feb 20, 2010)

mhammer said:


> I got my copies of both EPFM I and II from the library (and spent a small fortune photocopying them).


LOL, I do that too. I completely wore out my old printer/scanner/copier doing just that. I tortured that crappy printer with a silly amount of book pages and schematics until the insides broke apart. 
The last bunch of books I took out from the library I got lazy and just took hi-resolution pictures of all the interesting pages and diagrams on a digital camera. 

Very nice score with the white rub-on lettering.


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

Thanks for the soundsheet file. Listened to it a few times already. Funny to hear things introduced by the project number: "21...". I brought the binder with the photocopies with me on the bus to look and listen, but had to stand up the whole way, so maybe later today. The EPFM phaser is actually pretty darn nice-sounding, though. One of the bonuses of using the optoisolators is that they self-adjust sweep width at higher speeds. Nice.


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## b-nads (Apr 9, 2010)

Looks like a very cool pedal!


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