BJFe FuzzGuitar
This project continues my journey to co-operate and play around with the best pedal makes out there. This time the man and the myth, “Mad Professor”, Mr Björn Juhl made this Build-in Fuzz for me. We are not the only ones who are excited about this project and we would love to make more of these!
HERE’S HOW BJÖRN DESCRIBES THE “FUZZ 65” CIRCUIT HIM SELF
The Fuzz 65 is one I built in homage to the fuzz sounds used by the Beatles in studio and for that I had a look also at the kind of cables they were using and in this I consulted my local (online) Beatles historian.
It’s has three controls:
Volume
Fuzz
Nature – This controls allows at one end the circuit to work like Tone Bender and at the other end like Fuzz Face in terms of how the circuit loads the pick up and emphasis of frequency response
This works by dialing between either going straight into the germaniums or via a buffer and in the middle the input is connected through a resistans and that makes the input a voltage type input.
It is called 65 because that was the year fuzz became popular and also I could have built this fuzz in 1965 because it uses some funky looking mid 60’s germanium transistors although in 1965 I would have had to use a germanium transistor for the third transistor but today I can use a modern low noise transistor.
So technically it is a hybrid of many typical circuits because it is a standard application that the germaniums work in but it has also a filter after fuzz that cuts bass and I tried that back and forth and ended up at the same corner frequency as the same filter in Gibson FZ1 and that was tuning by the ear- I guess they were listening for the same thing back then…but I gave Fuzz 65 yet another filter that restores bass so the overall frequency response is more flat. In use straight into the germaniums give a sound similar to Fuzz Face in the texture of sound which makes top strings sound a little bassy but when you run nature at other end you can hear how the sound gets more upper midrange and is easier to play for leads with longer sustain.
When Nature is at noon loading is somewhat reduced and you get something that sort of in between
Setting both Fuzz slightly above noon gives a sort of overdrive sound that is rawer than overdrive
As an example of low gain fuzz sounds of the Beatles i suggest listening to George Harrison from the roof concert -obviosly he was using a Fuzz Face with his Telecaster of Rosewood into a Twin Reverb for those who want to be technical and historically correct while I prefer to view this as a function of sound
