Bazz Fuss optimizations: the fish variety

After the successful building of my first Bazz Fuss, I was ready to try more. There are some pointers on the Bazz Fuss page at home-wrecker, so I decided to check them out:

1. put the transistor and diode in a socket, so you can actually try some different ones without having to build a new board every time :)
2. add a pot between the emittor and ground, so you can dial back the fuzz a bit
3. use a 10k collector resistor instead of a 100k resistor, for... reasons.. :)
4. make switchable (on the website it's done with a balance pot) input caps to get rid of the ultra low end. (Hint: this did nothing for me..)

So, this is how it came out:

BF-2 Fish Fuzz, artwork by Petra Randewijk

When I finished putting it in the box, I found out that I wired the volume pot the wrong way around, so this is my first pedal with an Attenuation knob. The unmarked mini toggle adds a .47uF Wima MKS cap to the input, which should give a total of around .33uF input.

The board: L-R: the .1uF output cap, 10k collector resistor, unmarked LED, BC107, 4.7uF input cap

I tried a lot of different diodes and transistors, some of which were more successful than others. On the transistor side:

• MPSA14: overpowering amount of gain, heavy compression
• BC517: another Darlington, a little bit more controlled than the MPSA, but not my cup of tea
• BC109C/BC108C: a lot of gain, but pretty okay
• BC550C: the one I used in the BF-1: nice but a bit compressed
• 2n2222A: I don't like the high end on these, and the note trails are very fizzy, severe gating
• AC127: ouch, my vintage AC127s are unhappy, loads of hiss, very little signal, farty distortion.
• BC107: just the right one for me, I love the open low-mid range on these and even though the high end is not as controlled as for example on the BC550C, it's very musical, I think.

on the diode side:

• 1n4148: classic Bazz Fuss fuzz. Lots of compression, a lot of high end fuzziness
• Germanium diodes (probably 1n34a): A lot less compression, but the mid range gets a bit honky and some of the low end sounds like it's killing the diode
• OAZ205: A vintage (early 1960s) Germanium Zener Diode. Very nice open distortion, but very little high end
• Red LED (5mm): dark distortion, but the low end is too much for this one, some of the notes sound like they don't get clipped at all.
• unmarked clear LED: the right one! just a hint of compression, the open LED distortion characteristic, but with a better high end. All in all a very nice mix between the classic diode fuzz and the dark LED distortions. It's sad that I only have two, and I'm not even sure what color it is..

I've already taken this plastic box on the road with The Legendary Pink Dots and it performed very well. I think I like the magic toggle in the "up" position a bit better, but I'm not even sure if that's with the extra capacitor engaged or not..

BF-2 Fish Fuzz schematic