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Okay, probably something that gets asked a lot, but im building a Muff style fuzz for my friends christmas... And he likes the sound of the Mooer triangle buff, but nothing else about it, so i decided to make a little Muff clone
Thing is, im still preeeety new to this and im not sure exactly what trannies would work well in it. Do i just stick the to standard ones here
I'd say go with the NPN version and use trimmers for the collector resistors. You can get a lot of different sounds out of any transistor by adjusting the bias. Other things that have an impact on the sound of a big muff are the coupling caps, the caps and diodes in the feedback paths, and the tone stack. Transistors themselves don't have that great of an impact on the sound, usually what you hear as a difference in sound is that transistor A is biased to voltage X and when you put in transistor B that voltage is no longer X. If you adjust the circuit to compensate for different transistors, they will all give a relatively similar sound. If the circuit is designed well (which the big muff is) so long as the transistors you use meet the minimum gain requirement for the circuit, they will work fine. Putting a higher gain transistor in doesn't increase the gain in a big muff design. Some of the more simple 2 transistor fuzzes that adjust the gain via a bypass cap and pot (Fuzz Face, FY-2, etc), you'll see a more dramatic effect on how they sound depending on the transistors. But even in those designs, from personal experience, it seems to me that you still get more noticeable tonal and gain changes from adjusting the collector resistor values.
Thank you! Ive been looking at other forums and nothing is of any use at aallll. Though consensus seems to be that NPN is best. And cooool Ill go for allllll the things!
Thanks again, been panicing slightly at this :P
sonidero wrote:EMOTIONAL ATTACHMENTS TO SMALL METAL BOXES!!!
I think its a good idea to build 2 or 3 muffs that are just slightly different as a starting point to learning what does what for a modded muff. build one with 2N5088 and another one with a lower gain silicon NPN. it can be any transistor really. build a muff with lower gains but emitter resistors removed. build a muff with a tone stack bypass. build a triangle and a russian/civil war muff. those are the two big schools of muff right there. if your not sure what you want. just build your triangle straight with 5088. I only like my mids scooped on the russian muff when I play bass. my preference for a triangle or any other muff would be to mod the tone stack to scoop a little less or maybe just swap it for a high roll off tone stack. download duncan's tone stack calculator, it will help a lot.
