When i started to draw layouts, i did draw something like 10 of vintage fuzzes that weren’t published on this blog earlier. I build most of them and that’s when i realized why they weren’t posted. Most of them are pure crap. For those who are after “that 60’s sound” – the ear piercing super thin fuzz (or just plain ugly IMO) could be satisfied with Shin-Ei and Maestro fuzzes covered here. There are many, but i find only a fraction of those circuits to be any use. For example, the stock version of VOX distortion booster is really not worth your while. I can only speak out my opinions, but the same applies to most Maestro and Höfner schematics out there. But in search for good little fuzz circuits to practise my layout drawing on, i found Tim Escobedo’s circuit snippets. These are generally just proof of concept circuits and thus, not necessarily finished products.
This particular one just sounded good to me. It offers plain Elektra distortion-like, boring, but usable distortion with gain at zero. Fuzz rises with a turn of that knob, finally resulting in something really sick with massive made up overtones. It is basically a frequency tripler 🙂 So i though i’d share this one too.
As a few mods, you could increase the 100n cap value at the input, as the base circuit kills a lot of low end when gain is maxed – or – when the circuit is at its best 🙂
A word about the circuit from Mr. Escobedo:
“This is a fuzz using a “nonselective frequency tripler”, originally designed by R. Lockhart Jr. At low gains the sound can be very sweet. As the gain rises, you get a odd splatty fizz going on. And at max gain it’s completely nasty. A nice, easy build.”
