Germanium Transistors

[Narwhal-Industries]

I've never had a problem use my Loftech sig-gen. It was fine driving the Fuzz Face without a transformer. Playing guitar with the Fuzz Face hooked to a 10k test load right to the scope was fun.

[eatyourguitar]

the only reason I talk about impedance is that I have noticed huge differences in the amount of fuzz I can get when feeding line level sources directly into a fuzz vs through a transormer with a HI Z out. depends on the fuzz. but in my phantom octave, it passes a clean signal when feeding it line level.

if you guitar>fuzz face>scope thats fine. but signal gen>fuzz face>scope is just not going to prove anything in my opinion. unless it is signal gen>re amper>fuzz face>scope. you should still compare the final results of signal gen vs guitar to see what the differences are in the sine wave vs the guitar. if your getting different results with or without harmonics on the input, then you know you should be using various sampled one cycle waveforms of a guitar. then you can plot frequency response, phase, THD, harmonic content etc..

[Narwhal-Industries]

Believe me all of my methods where firmly rooted in science. Input impedance was one thing that I spent a lot of time on.

[eatyourguitar]

Thats cool, your probably way better at it than me. I dont have the equipment or any real training as far as all the math and science goes. I just assumed you were plugging in a function generator but i see now that you did figure out the exact impedance needed. I guess i underestimated you.

[Narwhal-Industries]

Math is key. I have lots of test equipment some of its great some of its meh, but I have what I need. I'd really like a new scope. A lot of my design work happens with a calculator, pencil and notebook. I designed a damn good fuzz this pass year. It was too complex to fit on a bread board. I did build parts of it on a bread board but I didn't get to hear it until I built the first one. Good thing the math worked out. Its just to bad marketing isn't my strong point.

[multi_s]

You cant make a fz1a with silicon cause silicon has 0 leakage. The fz1a needs leakage to sound right. The oc75 oc76 fuzz face i made sounds exactly lika a vintage unit. At this point, im too noob to know the real answer. I dont have any low gain silicon to do a direct comparison. And i will agree that some pedals sound great with silicon. I have no desire to make them worse or temperature unstable. Lets just say that germanium still has its place.

just for the record, Si transistors do not have zero leakage.