If you are in the UK/EU, and fancy building a germanium Fuzz Face, then Doctor Tweek ( usually has a nice range of Germanium transistors for sale at a very reasonable price. In my opinion transistor selection (hfe, leakage etc.), biasing, and component selection is far more important to the overall quality of tone. Your old Germanium Fuzz Face will most likely sound very different depending on temperature!Ĭertain Fuzz Face aficionados will say that a Fuzz Face must have NKT275’s to be the real deal. The downside to the lovely warm fuzz that the old Germanium NKT275’s produced was the inconsistency Germanium Transistors vary wildly in gain, leakage, and to top it off, are also temperature sensitive. However, many other Germanium transistors can be used to good effect if carefull attention is paid to their gain (Hfe) and leakage characteristics. If you find some be prepared to pay top £ for the pleasure. The original transitors used in these germanium Fuzz Faces were NKT 275’s, which are pretty much un-obtainium nowadays. In my opinion, germanium Fuzz Faces can work just as well as an overdrive/distortion as a fuzz if the guitar volume control is carefully used.Ī well tuned and biased Germanium fuzz can go all the way from clean, to crunch to all out Fuzz with a twist of your guitars volume control. The original units used Germanium transistors, which produce a more ‘organic’ and warm distortion (IMO of course) compared to silicon, as a result of a softer clipping characteristic, and respond to rolling back guitar volume controls very well. It arrived in late 1966, in its iconic big, red and round enclosure. The tones a Marshall head combined with a good germanium fuzz face produce can verge on divine! The first Fuzz Face was the one that started it all The Arbiter Fuzz Face.
Tone is subjective, and you may have a very different impression of these circuits sounds and vibe! etc.Īlso please note that these are my own personal thoughts on the tones these pedals produce.
Please also note that I have not covered any of the many modern variants of the Fuzz Face around, notable examples including the D*A*M Meathead, Meathead Deluxe and SuperBee, the Dunlop Fuzz Face re-issues (including the artist models), the Analogman Sunface etc. The Gravy Boat, via the Colorsound One Knob Fuzz, can be traced back to the Arbiter Fuzz Face the one that started it all!
My new pedal, the Gravyboat Fuzz, is based on the Colorsound One Knob Fuzz, with some tweaks and mods to make it fit more into a wider range of applications. I thought I would post a brief history of the good old Fuzz Face here.