Friday, May 24, 2013

Boss FZ-3 Fuzz

I recently got a Behringer clone of this one in a trade for free and thought i'd check the schematic out. Turned out a little simpler than expected with a few nice, quite interesting things in its topology. There's basically a buffer driven by transistor, which drives something not completely unlike a fuzz face. After that there's one more gain stage that's driving the tone stack that's not completely unlike the usual BMP tone stack. Pretty simple, still there's something that isn't done in every fuzz..  Doesn't sound too great to my ears, but i think this'll be a nice addition.
This layout omits the electronic switching and in/out buffers. Omitting those also frees us from having vref on board, which isn't touching the effect itself. Original has 2SC2458 transistors, but i've drawn the layout to accomodate the usual supects, 2N3904, 2N5088, 2N2222, BC109, BC550 and so on. You can use the original ones or what ever you prefer - just mind the pinout. Use sockets to find the ones you like the most... The pinout/orientation on the layout matches 2N3904/2N5088. Original also has W-taper pot for tone control, but i suspect that linear will do the job without any issues.



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