Back to building: the Bazz Fuss

In the years after building that first successful Fuzz Face I just built a couple of passive boxes, among which a looper/switcher that I use a lot.

Also, after watching how older Meyer Sound processors use LEDs to clip/compress excessive input levels, I decided to modify my DOD OD-250 Overdrive/Pre-Amp to have LEDs instead of the normal silicon diodes that are used to clip the signal. The result was a lot more output and a more "open" distortion characteristic. Eventually the footswitch started failing so I got an MXR Distortion+ and did the same mod on that one. 

Earlier this year I was looking around the internet in search of a nice little project I could do and found the Bazz Fuss on home-wrecker, from a design by Christian H, (neither of these pages have been updated in a while, by the way) and thought that I should be able to build a small project like that (5 components, plus bits) so I went ahead to make a proof of concept:

BF-1 Butterfly (artwork by Petra Randewijk)

This is what the board looks like: transistor is a BC550C, diode a 1n4148. The sound is very dark and fuzzy, played with a bass guitar you get very nice bass synth sounds. Also, because the diode "steals" a lot of current/voltage from the transistor, there's a lot of gating going on and note decay is very fizzy. In a good way, though :)

BF-1: 0.1uF output cap, BC550C, 4.7uF input cap

BF-1: 100k resistor, 1n4148 diode, that's it :)

This is what the schematic looks like:

All in all a very easy build an highly recommended if you want to try your luck at soldering :) Also, using sockets for the transistor and diode add a lot of fun, because you can try different combinations, as you'll see in my next post..

If anybody's curious about listening to these pedals I made, I will soon start putting up soundbites here and there.