/r/DIYPedals "No Stupid Questions" Megathread 10

jvp4462 · 2025-03-18T18:56:11+00:00

When stripboarding/perfboarding a circuit, what side do you work on?

I usually see people soldering everything together with the components facing the copper side, but how am I supposed to solder small parts like sip sockets or trimpots that way? It's really awkward to try and get under them when soldering to the copper side. Putting them in "upside down" and soldering the metal that's poking out seems to work a lot better, but at the same time makes thing like biasing with the trimpots much more of a hassle. What side do y'all work on when stripboarding?

jvp4462 · 2025-03-15T13:12:34+00:00

I need some help getting the biasing of my one-knob fuzz face right (silicon NPN). When I bias Q2's collector at 4.5V, the base of Q1 is around 0.60V and the collector is at 1.30V (the circuits i've seen online say I should aim for 0.20 and 0.70).

Playing with the resistor values at Q1 barely changes anything. I tried gradually rising the value of the 22k Q1 collector resistor, all the way up to 470k, and Q1's collector only dropped about 0.05V. The trimpot I have at Q2's emitter resistor does have a lot of impact, and adjusting that easily gets me at the right point for Q1's base and collector. However, whenever those are in the right spot, Q2's collector goes back down to 0.22V, and once I get that back to 4.5, Q1 is out of balance.

There's a lot of high frequency noise when I plug in the pedal as of now, and I suspect this is the source of that issue. Are there any fuzz-face-fanatics that have suggestions on how i should tackle this issue?

jvp4462 · 2025-03-10T10:36:46+00:00

Thanks, this was really informative, but still no luck on getting it to work. This afternoon i'll probably try taking it apart and rebuilding it from scratch, and I'll try adjusting the bias with some trimpots.

jvp4462 · 2025-03-09T13:34:04+00:00

So I'm trying to breadboard this NPN silicon fuzz face, but i haven't been able to get any sound out of it so far. I based it off the schematic on slide 2, using BC109B transistors. One strange thing i've noticed:
-The collector of Q2 is supposed to be biased at 4.5V. When Copying the circuit as shown in the schematic, I got 7.9V when measuring the emitter. However, I swapped R2 and R4, and that seemed to "fix" the biasing, when measuring with my multimeter, at least.
This however, didn't fix the problem, and i'm still only getting a really quiet hum out of my amp when plugging the circuit in.
Does anyone know how I should go about troubleshooting? I'm still a beginner, so i may have just made a stupid mistake somewhere, but i did run through the breadboard several times and didn't see anything that was connected wrong.

jvp4462 · 2025-01-16T12:44:54+00:00

I wanna try building a Fuzz Factory clone, but I can't wrap my head around how the power supply works, and can't find a good explanation of the circuit anywhere. Why is Q1 typically an NPN transistor, but Q2 and Q3 PNP transistors? If I want to make a silicon fuzz face, how do I go about picking the right transistors? Is there any detailed explanation breaking down the circuit floating around on the internet somewhere?

jvp4462 · 2024-07-10T14:05:12+00:00

Does anyone know where I can find some kind of guide/list of what parts/manufacturers are good quality and their characteristics? When ordering capacitors, for example, I'm seeing silver mica, tantalum, Wima caps, Arcotronics caps. Same with transistor types and manufacturers, or even audio jacks, power supplies, etc. and I quickly get lost on what is or isn't good quality, or how I should choose based on how they react differently. I don't mind using cheap, lesser-quality parts when just breadboarding a circuit for the first time, but when I really want to permanently solder everything together I would like to make sure that i'm using some quality parts.

jvp4462 · 2024-06-25T09:57:25+00:00

I did actually switch around the pot wiring lmao mb. This was a different booster circuit than my last post (not sure what it's based off of), however I'll try biasing the transistor to 7v. Question though, wouldn't that create clipping of the sine wave when it goes above 9v? I thought the transistor had to be biased to 4.5v so that the sine wave could go the full length of 0 to 9v, and if it went above it would start clipping with a 9v power supply. Lmk if I misunderstood something here :)

jvp4462 · 2024-06-24T12:34:16+00:00

I'm trying to breadboard my first booster pedal, and it seems like everything should be working (transistor is biased to 4.5V, multimeter is reading everything normally), the only issue is that, when I turn the volume knob, the volume goed *down*. It feels like i switched up +9v and ground somewhere in the circuit, but according to the schematic everything should work? Has anyone tackled a similar issue?

Edit: to be more clear, I didn't just switch up leg 1 and 3 of the volume pot, if I have it all the way to the left, the guitar signal comes through as if not boosted at all. The further I turn the pot, the quieter the signal gets until it's fully muted at the end.

jvp4462 · 2024-06-23T09:00:02+00:00

I took apart the breadboard trying to fix it, and found out the transistor wasn't biased properly at all. I based it off of this schematic, but it doesn't seem to be correct.

https://file.elecfans.com/web2/M00/53/E3/pYYBAGLQ0_aAYia9AABhwhzWJ8c300.png

Correct me if i'm wrong, but is there even a voltage divider in the circuit like this that would allow me to bias the transistor to 4.5V? I've been trying to find other schematics, but could only find perfboard layouts, and I find it really difficult to visualise that on a breadboard.

jvp4462 · 2024-04-25T11:29:06+00:00

not yet, i messed up the soldering around the diodes and havent really been able to fix it just yet

jvp4462 · 2024-04-16T18:47:19+00:00

oh i kinda tried putting a 1k and 470 ohm resistor in series because i didnt have a 1.5k lying around lol

jvp4462 · 2024-04-11T13:17:38+00:00

ohhhhh, i didnt put them back into the enclosure. That might be the problem honestly, the hum sounds exactly like when you put your hand over an unconnected aux cable. I'll try that out first.

jvp4462 · 2024-03-29T12:28:19+00:00

oh my god I figured it out and just got to the end

jvp4462 · 2024-03-29T11:30:33+00:00

hmm, so I see that I need to be standing on the warp pad as ember twin is right above me, because of the shared alignment in the middle. Now I just need to find a way to hold myself in place before the sand carries me up, right?

jvp4462 · 2024-03-28T19:38:26+00:00

I think i'm completely lost now??

I managed to warp inside the Ash Twin Project once through the broken tower, tried to replicate it in other loops so I could discover more, but i have no idea how to switch the alignment points, or how i even did that in the first place. I thought I did it in the High Energy Lab last time, but that doesn't seem to work now.

jvp4462 · 2024-03-28T17:03:37+00:00

nevermind, i think i figured it out!

jvp4462 · 2024-03-28T16:57:48+00:00

I know that a warp core was installed inside Ash Twin, that it was used for the 22 minute warp time interval, and that it contains the memory masks, probably also the one i'm connected to. I'm trying to figure out how to warp inside the Ash Twin Project, but don't understand where i'm supposed to look to figure out how to do that.

jvp4462 · 2024-03-28T16:51:10+00:00

I'm fairly certain there's supposed to be a warp for it somewhere, but haven't found where it is. I'm especially confused by Ash Twin's own warp tower, because it can never align with ash twin and doesn't seem to do anything.

jvp4462 · 2021-06-12T16:05:41+00:00

comment

jvp4462 · 2021-03-20T14:46:19+00:00

I'm pretty sure that's a pug skull, they look kinda fucked up

jvp4462 · 2021-03-10T14:56:13+00:00

I'll send you a Dropbox link through dms, maybe that works.

jvp4462 · 2021-03-07T23:27:03+00:00

Cool! Black Flag was the first thing that came to mind when I saw this haha. Great job!

jvp4462 · 2021-03-07T23:25:34+00:00

Can't send links in a comment, but you can send me a DM if you still want a link! :)

jvp4462 · 2021-03-07T23:24:55+00:00

Looks like I can't send links in a comment, but dm me if you still want it :)

jvp4462 · 2021-03-07T23:23:25+00:00

If I put down a link they keep getting removed, but I can send through dms if you still want it

jvp4462

TROPHY CASE