They don’t come much more straightforward than this – said to be a Dick Denney design, the Colorsound Fuzz Box is a one-knob silicon fuzz face with a couple of value tweaks, but other than that, you know what you’re getting here.
This circuit is also found in the Vox V1141 Super Beatle solid state amplifier.
The layout below is the D*A*M / Macari’s reissue, which is a great way to use up the little bit of vero left over from making other circuits.
COLORSOUND FUZZ BOX – 0.15″ VERO LAYOUT
There’s a few comments below regarding values – yes, they can vary a bit in the wild. I think the different Macari’s releases have slight tweaks to some resistor or transistor values. From what I gather, this is normally the bias resistors on Q2 (2k2 and 82 ohm as shown above).
There’s also a bit of debate on the topic at FSB
The Colorsound Hammer House Fuzz Box uses what looks to be 5k6 and a 270 ohm resistor, so there is some room for movement or experimentation in this area. I’ve certainly needed to change values occasionally to get the best results out of some vintage RCA silicon transistors that I was using.
Increasing the 82 ohm resistor lifts the output a bit. With the 82 it’s a bit above unity running full tilt.
Same again but with a 120 ohm resistor – you can see it has a bit more beef now compared to the input signal, despite only having an extra 38 ohms of resistance.
Below is the Hammer House version – even hotter again
