Lets continue the series about electronics components you will find in guitar pedals and how they work. Last time we spoke about resistors and role of potentiometers. Time for the second most common component of guitar pedals: the capacitor!
When I decided to make my own DIY guitar effects, I was totally lost about the tools that I needed: what do I need to build guitar effects? How much does a good soldering iron cost? And what is a good soldering iron? Where can I buy all that?
In this post, I will try to answer all these questions that we ask ourselves when starting. Lets focus on tools! ๐ ️
(My bench. It is almost never that clean haha!)
ESSENTIAL tools to make DIY guitar pedals
1. Soldering Iron
Lets start with the most obvious tool that you will need: the soldering iron! It is really important to have a GOOD soldering iron when you start. It will really make huge differences when it comes to soldering. ๐
Soldering can be a pain if your soldering iron is not powerful enough: pins of 3PDT, lugs of jack inputs... all necessitate quite a high amount of heat to solder properly. This is why I recommend an at least 30W soldering iron. A high quality iron will also have a more resistant tip, which make it longer lasting.
Beware! Use a pointy tip soldering iron, and not an electrician soldering iron.
Beware! I put links to amazon US, so the electrical tools will have a 110-120V plug!
You can also look for second hand tools, there are sometimes very good deal, especially for soldering stations.
Basic soldering iron: a classic soldering iron with a pointy end, with a 30W power minimum. It should work quite well! If you just want to make a few pedals, or if you do not want to spend a lot of money, it is an ideal first companion! Here is an example at $14. Of course, you can also buy this kind of soldering iron pretty much everywhere. Just make sure that it has a pointy end, and a 30W power minimum.
What about adjustable temperature? Adjustable temperature is a nice add on, but not a must. If you work with a small soldering tip, heat will transfer badly, making it more difficult to melt solder. Increasing temperature can be useful in these case. Being too hot can also damage heat sensitive components.
I usually recommend 250°C / 400° Fahrenheit for general soldering. You can increase to 350°C / 650° Fahrenheit for heavy soldering and SMD with a very fine tip.
Mid-range soldering iron: you want to make quite a few pedals, or you directly want to invest into quality tools? Weller is a reference in the professional soldering world, and their "professional series" is really, really good. By chance, Weller is really cheap in the US (compared to France), so get one! Here is an amazing soldering iron at $45. It is a professional tool that will last forever. It is pretty expensive, but worth it! No adjustable temperature though.
Professional soldering station: you want to assemble hundreds of pedals? In that case, investing in a soldering station can be a good idea. I found in love with the amazing Hakko FX888D station. Do not be scared by the "toy" look of the station! For only $99, you get a real professional-grade soldering station. No wonder why so many professional guitar pedal builders use one! You can read my review here.
EDIT: unfortunately it is not available anymore... But Weller is again your friend. This one is top notch
2. Solder
Before, solder was containing lead. It was used because the solder melted easily at low temperature, and was really practical for electronics as you do not want to heat components too much. However lead has been banned for ecological reason and is now forbidden in the EU (with the RoHS norm). ๐ณ
You can still find lead solder online. Your choice!
Silver or tin? Some people will tell you that silver solders are better. Practically speaking, I did not noticed that much differences when soldering, or for durability. Even in theory, the difference of resistivity is really, really low! Personally, I think it is a waste of money. Moreover, silver can oxidize...
Diameter? I recommend a diameter inferior to 1 mm. If it is bigger than that, it will be difficult to be precise enough with PCBs for instance. If you plan on soldering SMD, you can sure go for 0.6mm.
So, what to choose? Usually, I buy mine in a local shop (for mojo points maybe?), but you can find it pretty everywhere. I just saw that lead is still legal in the US, so it is up to you! Here are two nice example: with lead or lead-free solder.
Do not hesitate to buy large amounts. There is not a worst feeling than to be out of solder when you want to make a pedal! ๐
3. Pliers, wire strippers, screwdriver and wire cutting snips
Having wire cutting snips is absolutely necessary to cut wires, component legs. A wire stripper is also really useful to snip wires. No need for amazing technological stuff, you can find these really basic tools everywhere. I bought mine in a local DIY shop, but you can find everything online if you want to. Here is a simple pair of pliers to cut wires and leads.
Here is an automatic one, you can set the wire diameter, and it is sometimes easier to manipulate, especially if you have a lot of wires to strip. Your choice!
A "needle nose" pair of pliers can be really useful to tighten bolts of the different parts we use: potentiometers, jacks, 3PDT switches...etc.
Finally, you will need a screwdriver for tightening enclosures, setting trimpots...etc A multitool like this one can work.
4. A drill
To fit your circuits in an enclosure, you will have to drill holes! A drill is thus absolutely necessary. Fortunately for us, aluminum is rather a soft metal, really easy to drill, so you will not need a crazy expensive drill.
However, as a drill can be really useful in your daily life, you can also choose to buy a good model that will last and will be used for other things than guitar pedal making ๐จ
For drilling guitar pedal enclosures, a drill press is simply awesome. However, you might not want such an industrial equipment in your living room like me ๐
Here are some example of drills you can use:
The cheap one: I used (and still use...) a really cheap Chinese drill, which cost me around 12 euros (I do not know how is this even possible!), that I bought in a local store. You will surely find other options like this online or in your local DIY shop. Surprisingly, it works really well, and I have no problem with drilling aluminum.
The expensive / long lasting option: in this case, try to buy a good drill like a Makita. A professional grade drill is a bit more expensive, but will last forever.
A drill press. As I said before, drill presses are awesome for drilling guitar pedals enclosures. What you need is something with a decent amount of power, at least 350W / 1/2 HP. Variable speed or laser lightnings are a nice touch, but not necessary. An emergency stop button is however a must for me. Here is a good price for value one that will fit your orange enclosures very well ๐ Again, check for second hand! Many small businesses sell their old equipment online and you can find some really, really good deals there.
Drill bits: I would suggest buying a small number of HSS twist drills for metal drilling, of a few different diameters. A HSS step drill is also really useful. It will allow you drill any diameter you need for the part you are using
Beware! Safety and drills. Never wear gloves with a rotating machine, remove rings and jewellery (especially your watch) to avoid being dragged in the machine. Don't use your hands to hold the enclosure, use a clamp. Close the safety cover with a drill press. Remember: accidents happen!
Safety tip: keep the emergency number close to your drill.
There it is! You have got all you need for guitar pedal making! If you take really basic stuff each time, it can cost you around 70$ only! Lets now see "non necessary but helpful" tools that you might need from times to times.
Optional tools for guitar pedal making
Everything listed here is not absolutely essential, but can be really useful. In order to make clear what was really helpful and what was not, I rated each tool on the "nice but not essential" scale. 5 is the max score (essential), 0 the worst (completely useless).
1. Tweezers (usefulness: 4/5)
I hesitated to put these in the "essential" section. If you want to hold a component while soldering (and not burn yourself), to bend or maintain a wire precisely, having tweezers is tremendously useful.
What is a third hand? It is a simple tool with two arms, which allows you to hold parts. Most of the time, there is also a magnifying glass. It can be useful to hold a part while soldering, like a potentiometer, so your left hand is free to hold solder for instance. It can be useful to tin wires also.
To be honest, the magnifying glass is useless, even for SMD. But it makes the third hand look a bit like a helping little fellow, which is nice. I use it from times to times, but not a lot.
3. A desoldering tool (usefulness 4/5)
It is very likely that you are going to make mistakes from times to times, as every human being does. The problem with electronics is that soldering is really easy. However, desoldering can really be difficult, especially if you do not have the good tools... There are 2 cheap tools that will help you (a bit...) to desolder stuff:
Desoldering braid: this is what I use when it comes to desoldering. You heat it above the solder you want to remove, and once hot, it will absorb the solder. The downside of this system is that it heats up a lot, and you can burn a bit the PCB, or damage the component you are trying to remove... But it is very cheap, which is nice, and it works!
Desoldering pump: another useful tool to desolder. I never used it actually, but I plan on buying one because it seems easier to use than desoldering braid. It is a kind of syringe that will absorb melted solder. A simple one like that can do the job. If you are willing to invest a bit, try this amazing pump. It is crazy efficient with the silicon tip and works really, really well!
4. Combination wrench (usefulness 4/5)
Tightening pots, jacks and 3PDT switches with flat pliers can be really annoying on the long run. Especially if you make quite a lot of guitar pedals.
In that case, I would recommend to buy a combination wrench set. With it, you can tight all the mechanical parts of your pedal easily and fast. I use it every time and never regretted the investment!
Here is a nice set of combination wrench. You can find cheaper ones, but low quality tools are really a pain and can be damaged easily. If you are in Europe, Facom is THE brand for such tools, with a life guarantee included. Expensive but you get what you paid for!
Some prefer socket wrench. I think they have a tendency to scratch enclosures so I prefer combo wrench. You can find cheap multitools that will do the job with socket wrench though, wo do as you please!
5. Round file (usefulness 3/5)
Some holes that we need to make while making guitar pedals are quite huge, especially for the power jack. A round file can help to drill these kind of holes, as well as non standard diameters required for LED bezels for instance.
There it is!
That is all I use to make my guitar effects, and it is really sufficient! See? You do not need a lot... If you clone one "boutique" pedal, you should have spare enough money to buy most of it!
Prototyping is not always an easy task with guitar pedals. One solution is to heavily mod an existing pedal. But what if you want to start from scratch? How to test things before designing a circuit and solder everything?
Well, we have a simple solution for that: using a breadboard!
Let's go! In this blog post, we'll see why the breadboard is such a cool tool and how you can use it to design and test your own circuits.
Let's be honest: buying a power supply is not the funniest thing ever.
It is quite expensive (and I have to admit that I would have prefered to add another fuzz that I do not need a nice pedal to my pedalboard than a power supply! ๐) and differences between the several models on the market is not very obvious...
So I asked myself: is it possible to make a DIY power supply?
In this blog post, I will explain how a power supply work, what are the good criterias to choose one from an electronics point of view and if it is a good idea to make one yourself. Let's go!
When I made my first commercially available pedals, I chose to publish the circuit schematic online. Transparency always has been a missing thing in the guitar pedal marketing world, so it was a very natural move for me.
However, when I spoke about it with friends or colleagues, they all said to me: "why would you do this? You undermine your business by publishing everything!"
So here are my answers about why I think being transparent is a must when making guitar pedals, and why I think you should do the same if you build guitar pedals.
There is a very common marketing point that we see all the time with "boutique" guitar pedals: the famous vintage ultra-rare licorn-made type of diodes! Germanium diodes are often associated with a vintage and warm tone, whereas silicium diode sound harsher and fuzzier...
Time for a blog post about it!
What is a diode? How do they work? Which one should I use when making guitar effects?
People say that I worship the Univox Superfuzz a bit too much, but they are wrong. If I could, I would already have started a sect about this pedal!
It is simply my favorite pedal of all times! First because of its amazingly cool look with the huge "Super Fuzz" rubber pad, and also for its sound that is crazy loud and heavy. Seriously, best-fuzz-out-there!
After seeing Fu Manchu live in March, I could not resist buying one. After selling a kidney on the black market, I was quite lucky because I found a non-working unit on ebay that I could repair by replacing a few electrolytic capacitors.
The Super Fuzz is really the ultimate fuzz for me, so I decided to honor it by writing the most complete article about it. Here is the first part!
If you step on it, it hurts! Just kidding, it seriously works like Legos as well! ๐
You have to choose different bricks (the electronic components: resistors, capacitors, diodes, IC...) and to assemble all of them following a schematic.
The only problem is: like there are different colors for the lego bricks, electronic components are declined in various versions, with the same value.
For instance, many many different capacitors can be found with the same capacitance value: Panasonic SMF, Wima MKP2, FKP2, MKT standard... What a mess! Lets try to make order in all of this, and to see which capacitors are best suited for our use (guitar pedals).
The 6 elements of capacitors
There are globally 6 main types of capacitors: electrolytic, ceramic, film, tantalum, polystyrene and silver-mica capacitors.
The type of the capacitor is simply a description of what it is made of.
You should also look up for the capacitor working voltage (more on that in a bit). The tolerance of a capacitor is the maximum difference between a capacitor theoritical value and its real value. You should always look for that too; some capacitors can have tolerance values as huge as 40%! The smaller the tolerance, the better. ๐
Here are a few examples of through-hole capacitors. From left to right: 150pF ceramic capacitor, 1uF tantalum capacitor, 10nF Panasonic SMF film capacitor, 10uF Panasonic FC electrolytic capacitor and a 0.33uF Wima MKP2 film capacitor.
Lets start:
Electrolytic capacitors: they are cylindric. They usually have high capacitance value, so I would advise to use this kind of capacitors for any value above 1uF. They also are polarised most of the time, so beware with the orientation. A good model which I use a lot is the Panasonic FC serie: top quality and a nice black and gold look!
Ceramic capacitors: they are used for small capacitance value, around 10-500pF. They are not very appreciated by audiophiles, because they do not let pass some bass frequencies: they work as a high pass filter at 100Hz. If you make your guitar signal goes through this kind of capacitor without any alternate solution (another capacitor in parallel for instance), you will loose bass. However, when placed at strategic points of the circuit, they are very practical to choose how many trebles you want to go through. Usually, they have a high tolerance, so I recommand to look after models with a low tolerance.
Film-mica capacitors: they are used for low values like pF like ceramics. They are better than the ceramics, however, they are much bigger and more expensive. I would advise you to stay with the ceramics and save money!
Tantalum capacitors: drop-shaped capacitors, used for values around uF. They are not very good for audio, and quite expensive. The only advantage compared to other capacitors of the same values (electrolytics, film caps) is the space saving. Sometimes, their defects in audio can be useful to create a harsh sound good for some kind of dirty fuzz like big muff (for instance, the black arts toneworks pharaoh fuzz uses tantalum capacitors)
My 2 cents about tantalum capacitors:
Tantalum capacitors are great because they are so small, so they are use in many electronics devices like your phone or computer. However, they are many ethical problems with coltan (the mineral used to make tantalum) mining, with human rights violations. More infos here. I try not to use tantalum caps because of that.
Film capacitors: our favorites! Their value is in a large range from nF to 1 uF. You will use this kind of capacitors a lot! Moreover, most of them are really good for audio applications: MKP2 from Wima are a reference in the audio world. Panasonic SMF ECQ are also great, and have an easier-to-work-with shape with long lugs. Finallys, MKT standards are also quite good, and cheaper.
Here is a table to know which capacitor to use:
Value
Capacitor type
Examples
10-1000pF
Ceramic, Silver-Mica
Vishay ceramic caps, military grade ones are nice too
1nF-1uF
Film
Wima MKP2, MKS2, Panasonic SMF
1uF and more
Electrolytic
Panasonic FC
Except when indicated of course.
What about the working voltage?
The working voltage is the maximum voltage a capacitor can accept.
If you go above this voltage, your capacitor can be damaged! It is thus very important to use a tolerance which fits our usage.
In guitar pedal, we rarely use a voltage above 18V. So any capacitor with a tolerance above 18V is good.
Generally speaking, the bigger the tolerance value, the better.
Beware! With bigger working voltage also comes a bigger capacitor size. Electrolytic capacitors in particular can be HUGE! So always check the capacitor size as well.
Examples of capacitors in commercial pedals
Lets review a few pedals that some of you migh already have on your pedalboard! I will show you the guts of a few commercial pedals, and you will see what kind of capacitors they use.
Mojo Hand Iron Bell (Big Muff inspired fuzz):
Here, we can find ceramic capacitors (small yellowish ones) and Wima capacitors that are film capacitors as well (red squares). There are also Panasonic SMF (dark red capacitors). Very good capacitors overall! No surprises from this very good brand.
Fulltone OCD (overdrive / distortion)
Here, we can see lots of ceramic capacitors (blue "drops" everywhere on the circuit, and brownish round caps), and 2 electrolytic capacitors (black cylinders on the top of the circuit).
Bearfoot Pale Green compressor
Finally, in this Bearfoot pedal, we can see one tantalum capacitor (orange drop on the left of the circuit), MKT capacitors, probably Epcos brand (blue boxes), electrolytic capacitors of different sizes (small and big black and white cylinders). Good stuff here too!
You have never made a guitar pedal before? You are a bit lost and do not know where to start?
Here is the perfect place! I decided to write a full tutorial for beginners, to build an Earthquaker Device Acapulco Gold, step by step. No excuse not to get started!
The Acapulco Gold is a simple, yet very fun pedal to play with, and is perfect for beginners. The circuit is simple and easy to mod as well. With this tutorial, you should be able to build your first guitar pedal!
If everything goes well, you should get a guitar pedal like this in the end:
Ready to make your first guitar pedal? Let's get started!
Rule #1 in guitar pedal building is: "It NEVER works at the first attempt"
So you will have to learn quite quickly what to do when one of your wonderful DIY guitar pedal is not functional. Fortunately, beginners or tired experts often make the same very common mistakes.
In this article, I made a small list of things to check when your pedal does not work, from the most common to the least common errors. This is of course not an exhaustive list, but it includes a set of common problems and errors that you will surely encounter one day.
Here is my last ""build", I modded a Behringer UV300 vibrato:
Behringer released a whole series of pedals inspired by not-produced-anymore Boss pedals like the Hyper Fuzz FZ2 (Behringer Super Fuzz 300), the Heavy Metal HM2 (Behringer Heavy Metal 300)...etc. I was really interested in one of them: the Behringer Ultra Vibrato, which tries to emulate the famous Boss VB2.
One of the nicest parts of making guitar pedals is having a personalized design. However, it is quite hard to make good looking guitar pedals.
Here are a few techniques to make guitar enclosures pretty! You can of course combine these techniques to get the best looking pedal possible!
I will present you a lot of techniques, from the most basic ones to the most professional looking ones.
1. Bare aluminum enclosure
It is the simplest way to do: just let the enclosure in bare aluminum.
Please don't do that.
Bare aluminum enclosure guitar pedals simply do not look good. They really look like something cheap and dirty that you have done quickly in your garage, whereas you have probably spent a lot of hours on it!
It can be nice for prototyping though, you can improve the design later on if you are satisfied with the result. (practically speaking, it is very rare to improve the design... and I like good looking prototypes so not for me!)
Pros
A circuit in a box is better than a circuit without a box...
Cheap
Quickest possible method
Cons
Not really good looking
Do not really reflect your hard work and dedication
Indeed, this first version was nice, but one main drawback that was feedbacked to me is that the switch was activated on release, which was not always very intuitive or easy to handle. Moreover, I wanted to add a "temporary" bypass option in the Montagne Tremolo.
In this post, I am going to explain a bit the new code and to show you how I did it.
If you have not read my post about Relay Bypass, I highly recommend you to read it before reading this post. All the basics of microcontrollers are presented there.
Yesterday, I received an email from a beginner that decided to make his first guitar pedal. I always enjoy this kind of emails and answering questions is part of the game. This time, he asked me a question that I had several times: "my circuit is noisy, could it be a ground loop?"
Ground loops are part of the legends and myths around DIY guitar pedals. When asking about noise in a setup, it is the most common answer, and is supposed to be the main cause for hum, hiss or other noises that you can have on your first circuits.
So I decided to write a post about it, starting from the begining:
Today, I am going to introduce the concept of Development Hell: it is a special place where projects stay when they need a lot of fine tuning before properly work. Unfortunately, I have a few projects that are still burning there, like the one I am going to present today.
It is a multi-fuzz machine! I always felt that a lot of Fuzz are quite a "one trick pony", they have a very characteristic sound that can be modulated by mods, but still sounds "like a fuzz face", "like a big muff"...etc. Moreover, fuzz are usually quite simple circuits, and I find that allowing one spot per fuzz on a pedalboard can quickly be space-inefficient.
So I decided to create a multi fuzz pedal, with no more than 3 different fuzz inside : a germanium Fuzz Face, a Muff Fuzz and a Companion Fuzz, which should provide the 3 main "flavors" of fuzz in this world: a classic warm, soft fuzz face, a "chainsaw", very raspy Companion Fuzz, and a compressed and heavy Muff Fuzz.
On top of that, I added an upper octave generator that allows to combine it with any fuzz, with a potentiometer to adjust the amount of octave. It is based on the Green Ringer circuit, which is a small, but efficient analog octaver circuit.
And of course, I made it fit in a 125B enclosure...
Let's face it: your good old soldering iron is not always the best pal to work with.
I had some troubles with mine: no support to put it when I busy doing something else than soldering, which can be quite dangerous if it falls or burn something. Moreover, the power cord was quite short and not very flexible, so it was not always easy to find a good "spot" for it in order to be perfectly comfortable. Finally, it takes a long time before getting hot enough to solder, and 30W is sometimes a bit low to solder big potentiometer or jack legs.
So I decided to invest a bit in a soldering station.
After reading a lot on the web, I have found this little gem: the Hakko FX888D, a Japanese soldering station that you can find for $96 on Amazon.
The Maestro Fuzz-Tone is simply the first fuzz ever! I felt a bit like an archeologist when inspecting this effect ! Someone gave me this one for repair, experiencing some issues with the built-in jack and the switch. Here it is:
It is quite in good shape for a 50 years old guitar pedal! The pots allowed me to date it, from 1966. There is a serial number as well, but I do not really know how they work. I think each serial correspond to the number of the unit. Thus, the lower the serial, the older the pedal is. This fuzz is not that big for a vintage fuzz, especially compared to the 1973 Supa Tonebender that I had on my bench before.
At the front of the pedal, there are two controls: Volume and Attack (translate by "Fuzz"). It is the second version of the Fuzz-tone, the FZ1-A. The two knobs are also original, and are the same "reflector" knobs used on vintage Les Paul.
Indeed, the pedal was made by Gibson in the same factory as the Les Pauls, in Kalamazoo, Michigan! Thus, a lot of parts are shared with vintage Les Pauls: the knobs, potentiometers and some low value capacitors. I believe that it allowed Gibson to lower a bit their prices, selling this pedal for $40 at the time (which should be around $300 today though...). Gibson even included it in some bass produced at that time, like the Gibson EB-0F, Gibson EB-SF 1250 and Epiphone Newport EB-SF!
Inside, the circuit is dead-simple. Three pnp transistors, wire on an eyelet bakelite board create the saturation. They are Motorola 2n2614, old germanium transistors. The original FZ1 used germanium 1n270 transistors, whereas the FZ1-A version used Motorola 2n2614. It has also old carbon-comp resistors, from the sixties!
The electrolytic capacitors had been replaced (very common, old electrolytic transistors tend to leak, and are often replaced in vintage builds like this one), the yellow Suntan capacitor is not original as well. Apart from that, all the rest is original! It feels quite extraordinary to discover a perfectly preserved circuit like this one when opening the pedal, it feels a bit like opening Toutankhamon's tumb!
Close up on one of the transistors:
The fuzz has only one input, and a jack allows you to connect it directly to your amp. Well, it is one the first guitar pedals, so pedalboard were not really an option at that time!
History of the Maestro Fuzz-Tone
The Maestro Fuzz-Tone FZ1 was the first fuzz pedal ever! In the early 50s, blues guitarists started to push their amps to make it distort and create a weird, unusual guitar sound: saturated guitar sound. Some players even made holes in the speaker to make the distortion even greater! In 1961, Grady Martin bought a faulty transformer creating a weird distortion, and recorded a song called "The Fuzz" with it. The name "Fuzz" was born!
The song became really famous, and many artists did want to use the same sound. However, the transformer died shortly after the song was recorded. Glenn Snody, the original owner of the transformer and Revis Hobbs, a radio engineer, wanted to recreate the sound of the transformer using transistors. And this is how the Fuzz-Tone circuit was created! Snody and Hobbs showed it to Gibson, who developed a prototype and commercialized a first batch of 5000 units in 1962, selling it for retail price of $40 at the time.
The original Fuzz-Tone advertisement is quite amusing, they say it can sounds like an organ or mellow woodwinds... I would rather say: a huge screaming dirty nasty sound that will crush your ears lol! Here is the record:
I do not know how they made the recording, I cannot reproduce any of these sounds at home! This record feels like listening to the really birth of rock...
The Fuzz-Tone was quite a commercial failure: besides the 5000 units shipped in 1962, Gibson did not sell any other fuzz pedal until 1965! Indeed, in 1965, the Rolling Stones issued "Satisfaction". Keith Richards did use the FZ1 on the records to make the main riff. It was used to emulate the sound of a horn, because the Stones did not have horns in their band at the time.
The Fuzz-Tone became then really famous (the hype for guitar effects was already there :) ), and Gibson sold more than 40 000 units later! It also inspired many other manufacturers that begin to create other fuzz circuits like the Tonebender, Fuzz Face...etc.
Versions and other models
The FZ1 was declined in several models. The FZ1 was quite a commercial failure, and Gibson did not make more of them... It is also the more collectible version fo the FZ-1, as only around 5000 units were manufactured (less than the Klon Centaur!). You can distinguish between these four version by looking at the front of the enclosure. Here are the four main versions of the FZ1 (spot the differences!):
In 1965, the Rolling Stones made it famous, and Gibson issued another model, the FZ1-A. It did not use the same transistors (2n2614 instead of the original 2n270), and used only one AA battery!
There was a few change to the circuit: the two 20uF coupling electrolytic capacitors were replaced by 1uF ones, and the second collector resistor was changed to 10k instead of 1.5k, maybe to compensate the lower voltage. The name of the model is clearly written on the front of the enclosure, with "FZ-1A" instead of "FZ-1".
It was first manufactured in the Kalamazoo factory in Michigan, and then, after 1968 (not so sure about the exact date though), FZ1-A were later manufactured in Lincolnwood, Illinois. The location of the factory is written below the Gibson logo. The serial numbers are also higher (see below).
Finally, the FZ1-A was a reissue in 2002, exactly reproducing the circuit and the enclosure, with the same transistors! Fortunately for us, it was manufactured in Nashville, Tennessee, which is written just below the Gibson logo. Also, the reissues do not have a serial number engraved.
The FZ1 also had successors. Later on, Maestro issued the FZ1-B, which uses silicon transistors. The circuit is thus quite different, powered by a 9V battery, and the Fuzz does not sound quite the same. It is less saturated, and a bit buzzy. It is pictured on the left here:
Later on, the FZ1-S model was issued in a huge enclosure, with a very cool looking metallic circle. It has three controls, and a switch for the tone control: you have guessed it, it has almost nothing to do with the original Fuzz Tone! It is closer to a Fender Blender or an Univox Super Fuzz (no octave though).
Serial numbers of the FZ1: date your pedal easily
Sometimes pots have been replaced, and the pedal can be hard to date. I tried to decipher the year of each serial number. This is not an official statement, however, I have emailed Gibson about it, maybe they have more infos to give me. In the meantime, if you are the lucky owner of a FZ1, you can give me the serial number and the date of your pedal. Thus, we can complete the table!
Model
Year
Factory
Units shipped
Min-Max
serial seen
Serial
between ?
FZ1
1962
Kalamazoo, Michigan
5461
870-4628
1-5461
FZ1-A
1965
Kalamazoo, Michigan
3454
6174-?
5462-8916
1966
Kalamazoo, Michigan
20943
10665-21354
8917-29860
1967
Kalamazoo, Michigan
6625
22933
29861-36485
1968
Kalamazoo, Michigan
?
42970
36486-42970
FZ1-A
Lincolnwood, Illinois
?
43762-44537
43762-44537
FZ1-B
Lincolnwood, Illinois
?
No serial number
no serial
FZ1-A Reissue
2002
Nashville, Tennessee
?
No serial number
no serial
The easiest way to do it is to do these steps:
Find the name of the model (FZ1 or FZ1-A?)
Find the place it was made (Kalamazoo, Lincolnwood or Nashville?)
Read the serial number
If your pedal is not in the serial numbers indicated above, open it and look at the potentiometers. The date should be on it, like on vintage guitars.
Circuit analysis: how does it work?
As mentioned before, the circuit is based around three transistors:
Like usual, let's divide it in functional parts:
It has a negative polarity because of the PNP transistors, and use only one AA battery, so 1.5V only!
Input stage
The input stage is basically a small buffer that also cuts some bass.
First, there is a coupling capacitor of 0.01uF. It avoid parasitic DC current to enter the circuit, and also filter some low frequencies: you loose a bit of bass. A 1M resistor connected to ground prevents noises when the pedal is switched on.
The first transistor is wired in emitter follower (not really common in guitar pedals), in order to adapt the impedance of the guitar signal. The emitter is indeed connected directly to the power supply. Thus, it has a gain of around unity, and does not amplify the signal.
There is another electrolytic coupling capacitor after this capacitor.
Saturation stage
This is where the fuzz happens! A transistor is pushed beyond its limits and saturates because of the gain that it too high.
The bias of the base of the transistor is defined by R4, R5 and R6. The fuzz knob is wired as a variable resistor, in parallel to R6. So when the Fuzz knobs changes value, the bias of the base of the transistor varies. Basically, the more you turn the "Fuzz" potentiometer to the right, the higher is the current going through the base of Q2.
Basically, there is too much current going to Q2, which creates saturation: the fuzz is there!
Note that the emitter of the transistor is wired directly to ground to make the gain of Q2 maximum! 10k is also quite a high value for the collector resistor, and it helps increasing the saturation even more. If you replace it by a bigger value, you can increase the saturation even more!
C3 is a coupling capacitor that prevents any parasitic current from the collector to go in the circuit.
Output stage
This stage amplifies the signal and can even boost it a bit to get a nice volume output.
It is very simple : the Q3 transistor amplifies the signal a lot (and saturates as well : there is no emitter resistor, plus a high value collector resistor = very high gain!).
The C4 capacitor is a coupling capacitor that prevents parasitic DC current to go out. C4 also cuts some bass, as it is quite a low value (10nF). If you use a bigger value, the pedal will be more bassy and muddy. I actually like it with a higher value, it really changes the character of the fuzz.
Finally, a volume knob sends more or less signal to ground. If you turn the potentiometer to the right, the resistance increase, and more signal goes out the circuit instead of going to ground: higher volume output! It is the same control that is used in the Fuzz Face.
There it is! I hope that this post was helpful and fun to read! If you have any remark or question, post a comment below!
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, which is nice, and it works!
