Miles Ahead Fuzz - a fuzz face platform

[Cortex]

Hi guys, might as well share this one with y'all!

The idea behind Miles Ahead Fuzz is to basically have a fuzz face platform, a self-sustaining and self-sufficient fuzz face pedal that you could take with you wherever you go and always have the best sound, always be able to try any transistor you could possibly stumble upon, and be able to perform any mod on it with absolute ease. I originally wanted to sell these on e-bay with corresponding "mod kit" bags, that would contain everything needed to tune your FF the way you want to.

It started kinda like this



and then I took it from there.
The first version looked something like this





You can see opportunities for most of the mods are there, sockets for caps going between collector and base, cap to ground on the input to remove RFI, maximum fuzz restricting resistor, and other stuff...
There is a switch to reverse polarity, to the left it is positive ground, and to the right it is negative ground.
So all you have to do to transform the Miles Ahead Fuzz from Ge to Si and vice versa, is reverse the orientation of electros in their sockets, flip the polarity switch, and you are done. Then you obviously put the right transistors in, there's a trimpot for biasing Q1, and the potentiometer on the top of the enclosure serves as a bias for Q2. But, how will you know whether or not you biased the thing "right" ?
Here's how -



You have a probe inside, that measures voltage, and a LED screen that shows the voltage, a built in voltage meter. The picture is showing biasing the Q1 in the case of a Si FF.

Now you may have noticed the push pull potentiometer inside the enclosure, it is the pedal's Volume pot.
It's push-pullness does the following thing - it connects the voltmeter to the battery, and it connects the voltmeter to the circuit. You push the pot down again, it's completely out of the circuit.

So here's the finished product





[when you start the voltmeter and the probe, and obviously have no jack inserted, you get how much of the battery's juice is left ]



I only have a sound sample of the Si version, to tell you the truth I don't even remember what transistors of what gains were in there... [my friend was playing guitar, he has a sick right hand punch]
[soundcloud]https://soundcloud.com/ssmc/fuzz-sa-biasom[/soundcloud]

Currently I am using a "bonamassa" Gt-308V as Q1 and a PNP Si BC179 transistor as Q2, so it's a hybrid Ge/Si design at the moment, and I am loving it. It has the round and boomy bottom of the Ge FF and the aggressiveness and gain of the Si FF. Cleans insanely nice with the guitars volume knob.
I have some npn Ge Tesla's in the mail, so I'm gonna try a npn Ge in both Q1 and Q2 positions, but I am really eager to try a higher gain npn Ge as a Q2 and something sweet like a hfe 50 or 70 2N2369a npn Si as Q1. I have a feeling that's gonna rule. That way, the temperature instability will disappear as well, cause I'll have a Ge in Q2 and not in Q1.

I could go on about the FF forever...I spent way too much time tweaking it and learning stuff via trial and error method. I was obsessed by it...I still think it's the best dirt pedal ever. With my band I just can't use it unfortunately, because we're playing the kind of music that doesn't benefit from a fuzz face at all...but I would really like to have a band where I could use it as God commands.

Oh...and if you were wondering what kind of a snake is sitting behind the Miles Ahead Fuzz, it is my Jive King 20 combo [I won't embeed pictures and that way try to make it a little less of an off topic]

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I don't know if there's a dedicated fuzz face topic here on the forum, but if there isn't I would really like to hear what you guys like, and if there are similar fuzz face lunatics here like myself.

Cheers!

P.S. I made this a while ago, and since then I made a lot more fuzzes and while this one is one of my all time favorites, I was thinking of selling it or trading it for something [some nice reverb or other modulation effect, but mainly reverb], cause I wanna fund some other builds, there is just no end when you get a fuzzy disease, I wanna build them all, like...every fuzz that ever got any praise and see what I like best. Or just have them all. Haha, right.

[Chankgeez]

Interesting, but I was thinking there's no fuzz on that Miles Davis album.

There's not even any guitar.

[Cortex]

Haha, does it really matter? I love that album and Miles in general and was listening to the thing while building this so I thought why not call it like that, considering it's a progressive fuzz with lots of options, and being a little arrogant it's miles ahead of a typical fuzz face :P
If you wanna be picky, there was so much fuzzy goodness going on by McLaughlin with Miles on his side later hehe. Cheers man!

[Chankgeez]

Nah, doesn't matter. It's only a name. Your pedal does look like it has lots of potential.

Don't forget about Pete Cosey's playing with Miles, lots of good fuzz there too.

[jreeves47]

Very cool!

[ThePastRecedes]

Where did you get the volt meter from? Looks pretty cool

[skullservant]

THATS SO RAD

[eatyourguitar]

I had this same idea a few months ago but I will probably never finish it. since your already started, I will tell you where I'm at and maybe you can use some of my ideas.

1) smallest zero insertion force socket is 16 pins. you will not damage your components and you can mix components of different lead diameter as long as you don't use big mojo resistors. I already have my ZIF16 sitting here waiting. cheaper on ebay than the usual sources.



2) Attiny45, attiny85 etc... are about $1 (DIP8) depending on your quantity. you have at least 2 analog inputs that will read up to 5v directly with no buffer! this means low parts count and 4.5v voltmeter computer controlling something else. you can send serial out to a display driver but some 7 segment displays will have a serial input built in. this keeps it simple.

3) you can use MCP4151 (digitally controlled pot) to do computer controlled self biasing fuzz face!

4) I really like these latching DPDT panasonic relays TX2-L-5V. they only consume current when switching, not when idle. you might need a failsafe or feedback to the MCU so you know what state it is in. thats the only down side but it is worth it to save the battery. which brings me to my next point.

5) the attiny45 can be forced into power save or power off in software.

6) I would not worry about the supply voltage. there is an external device you can use for that simply by sticking it into the input jack. you might find some creative use for the extra pole on the DPDT relay. feedback to the MCU is one example. if you do still want to monitor the supply voltage, you can use two 5M %1 resistors in a voltage divider hooked up to one of the analog inputs on the attiny45. your 9v battery will never exceed 10v, this works perfect. again, your reading in about 4.25v max from the supply through the divider.

7) lose the display. you turn the fuzz on by inserting a cable, it does a self bias in 3 seconds and completely powers down and disconnects all this extra stuff except the MCP4151. you dont need to see 4.5v if it is always 4.5v all the time. you dont know its there.

P.S. actually you might want to monitor supply voltage after all since a correct bias is V+/2 and not 4.5v. my bad yo

[Ben79]

This looks like a very intelligent approach to getting thr most from a very simple circuit.