Freaky Fuzz for the Fourth

Yadda Yadda Yadda, Sam doesn't like fuzz. WRONG! I've been lying to you, the readers, and myself. I'm sorry. I promise to do better from here on. I've built numerous Bazz Fusses, a Fuzz Face clone, a Muff style clone, and countless other fuzz circuits that I'm currently forgetting. Most of them danced sonically in my head for brief moments before being packed away and forgotten. The Seymour Duncan Tweak Fuzz however, it's a different beast.

The layout popped up, I searched for demos and immediately I recognized how highly tweakable this circuit is. Which is the whole purpose of the original pedal. In some cases, such as the Diaz Texas Ranger, I love the idea of switchable input caps. I never thought this concept would be what won me over to the dark side of fuzz though. The original layout was a bit much, with all the input caps, so I decided to slim it down and use sockets as the input device. This way I can pick and choose what input cap I like best.

With capacitors ranging from 10pf to 1uf I've decided to go on a bit of a journey. The circuit can sound like a nice mellow overdrive or a hairy, velcro ripping fuzz. The only drawback is if you expect it (by which I mean my slimmed down version) to clean up crystal clear, because it doesn't. It's still a bit fizzy, but it does clean up with the guitar's volume control. Anywhere between 4.7nf to 150nf seems to be my favorite, with each value giving the sound its own unique qualities. I tried a 470nf and that's when we reached velcro territory. I've not been brave enough to get into the 1uf world yet, but I have to try, just to be thorough.

The only changes I will suggest are C4 should be sockets, and to use an anti-log, or C/reverse, taper for gain. There is a teardown video on youtube that states the gain pot is C2k, I used a C1k and it works fine. Other than that it's verified, it sounds pretty good and it's highly tweakable. Once I've decided what value I like best as the input cap I will remove the sockets and solder it in. Either that or I'll find a good overdrive sound and good fuzz sound and make it switchable between those two.