Thursday, 14 June 2012

Lovepedal - Silicon Fuzzmaster


Here's another Lovepedal for you. What's in this one I wonder? Well, IVIark (of the great tagboardeffects.blogspot.com) has provided a trace and schematic with the help of rmrosa. Firstly lets see the Lovepedal description;

"Your quest for the ultimate Fuzz ends here.

Lots of players use it like an OD pedal or full on fuzz, even distortion.. Roll back the guitar's volume and you're left with a lively shimmer atop your guitar and amp's identity. Amazingly, this happens to an appropriate degree throughout the pedal's range, and without the annoyingly excessive boost in volume that many overdrive pedals generate. And, yes, it's dead quiet.

The Fuzzmaster is a VERY sweet, smooth, silicon transistor based, fuzz that is warm, organic and sings with sustain. While it has an UN-mistakable vintage tendency, it also has a unique voice. Vintage Fuzz Face tonal heaven and everything in between, even tweed amp tones are in there."

And we're going to need a nice ProGuitarShop demo too;


So it sounds good enough, now lets have a look at it's innards - here's the schematic;


So it's the standard Fuzz Face circuit with a few tweaks - firstly the Blend cap which controls the bass level (and overall fatness) and slightly altered gain control network. The main change is the way the circuit utilizes PNP transistors but is still wired as a standard negative ground circuit (so it doesn't require it's own isolated power supply!). It's a clever trick that has been around for a while now.

Note, rmrosa (who provided the circuit to trace from) noted down these voltages from the original:

"The stock setting of the 10k trimmer on the PCB layout is 2.73k
Q1:
1 - 1.46V
2 - 6.62v
3 - 7.24V

Q2:
1 - 6.62V
2 - 7.48V
3 - 7.93V"


And, finally, here's the freestompboxes.org forum topic for any more info you require; http://freestompboxes.org/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=17975

5 comments:

  1. Just built this from the vero linked above. Very nice pedal. Wondering what would happen if I put germaniums in place of silicons with circuit as drawn on vero.

    Thanks!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Very nice sound fuzz, with a touch of od.
    Love it.
    I used B1K pot, what you suggest to get more subtle drive increasing?

    ReplyDelete
  3. If no trimmer, connect resistor to Q2 Collector to the two 100nF to volume?

    ReplyDelete
  4. I snipped out the 4n7 input cap. I found that with it in the circuit, it became too trebly when dialing back the knob. With it out of the circuit the 100K pot becomes an input attenuator which still rolls bass off but isn't as harsh as the original circuit.

    ReplyDelete

Comments are welcome on Revolution Deux. However, please do not spam links to unrelated sites - these comments will be removed! Thanks - Briggs.