ilovefuzz.com

I've built a few kits and modded pedals with great success but I've tried to build 3 different circuits on vero and not one has worked. I started with the "radioshack" fuzz then moved on to something without as many parts and attempted a SHO and when that didn't work I figured I'd try the Bazz Fuss and no luck . The bypass works fine but when engaged I get a wimpy quiet fuzz sound and the led doesn't light up. What am I doing wrong?







This is what I'm going off of.



Edit:
On top on not getting this to work I dropped my Rub-a-dub that I built and now it has a fuzz-reverb going on and the volume pot doesn't have an effect but the reverb does. It's sounds pretty cool but I'm sure that can't be good for it. **Fixed it. The wire to the volume pot snapped when it fell.

Is the pull down resistor on your led touching the enclosure? Double check that your transistor is in correctly as well.

The resistor isn't touching the enclosure. I'll check the transistor but I might just remake it entirely.

I might be looking at it wrong (it's 3:45am... heh), but I don't see where the power supply ground connects to the board's ground.

I see the ground wire running from the DC jack to input jack. The output jack appears to be connected to ground through the enclosure. I don't see a ground connection for the board.

Connect the potentiometer ground lug to the input jack ground lug with a jumper, and see if it works.

Mike

@Mike I did what you said and that it helped somewhat and I realized I put the ground in the wrong place. The sound that comes out is clean and the volume knob is reactive but no led or fuzz.

is the polarity of the LED correct? disconnect one leg of the LED and see if the effect works. If it does, the LED is the culprit.

your photo looks like it has some solder bridge. take a good look at it or just use your multimeter set to ohms with the power off to check for solder bridges.

also, can you post a picture of the other side of the board you made.

@Tweed the led is fine I checked with a battery.
@eatyourguitar I think what you saw was just a long lead but wasn't actually touching anything. Here is the flipside of the board.

hmmm... honestly sounds like a power issue. Do you have a meter to check voltages? Is the power supply your using 'known good' and works on other stuff? If you don't have a meter, solder a 5k resistor to the + lead of an LED, test it with a battery, and then start at the power jack to see if it's getting + voltage. Could be a bad jack, broken wire, or fried component on the board.

Transistor orientation?

I'm guessing its something to do with your karma.


In all seriousness, perhaps check the pinout on the transistor. Try switching it around. It looks like everything is wired correctly but you may have picked up an odd transistor package with reverse pinout... its the only thing I can think of that gives the results you're getting. It should at least be loud, the bass fuzz isn't super gainy in my experience but it should be loud and not "wimpy."

Also work on your karma though.

So I built another design of this circuit and got it to work. Thanks for your help everyone.