Salvage Germanium Fuzz Face from Vintage PCBs! 

I've salvaged a bunch of 'germanium' transistors this way! Usually (hfe=50-90),which is more usable than most folks' think.

Man the traces on those old pcbs are beautiful.

0.55V on Q1 and 5V on Q2 should have given a more mellow, smooth sound at the end in that hfe range. I personality prefer to set Q2's collector between 5 and 5.3V with germanium transistors with around 100Hfe. 4,5V is best for smaller Hfe like Q1 around 50 and Q2 : 80/90. That's very subjective of course but that's my personal tastes, I like to let a Fuzz Face « breathe » a little. It also gives a better clean up with more dynamics. For silicium versions (BC108C, BC109C, BC183…) : 1.4V on Q1 and 5.6V on Q2 for a glassy clean up and not too much compressed distorsion at full volume on the guitar. Your videos are excellent by the way ! Thanks.

Salvage is great fun!

Great content! Instantly subscribed

Beautiful job!

I’ve tons of old 50’s-70’s boards. Glad I saved a bunch.

I've been watching your videos and recently bought a couple very similar boards before seeing this video! Cool!

fantastic video !!! ...and glorious sounds at the end 👍

Awesome video and more impressive breadboard setup

Excellent vid. Thanks!

this is such a great idea

that's the coolest diy fuzz pedal build ever, let alone the pedal sounding amazing! you sir are a hell of a pedal builder!

fascinating stuff. i recommend NTE de-solder braid

When you said simple circuit, you weren't kidding.

Thanks for the video, pretty cool build, I think this is the best video about fuzz face build on youtube, I'm using 47k for q1 and unknown trimpot on q2 on my npn fuzz face, but sounds much cleaner than yours ...

So cool man

You and I need to talk- my uncle was an electronics repairmen during the 70s and 80s and he collected old PCB boards to get precious metals from- only removing certain components that contained whatever he was looking for. Then he tossed the boards into a pile where they've sat to this day. He also collected any electronic device he could get his hands on- which turned out to be a ton of stuff. He has an old house trailer literally packed with all this stuff- everything from old gaming consoles, computers, to adding machines, VCRs, testing equipment, etc., etc- if it had electronic technology in it, he would take it and chunk it in his collection. Over the years ppl learned he would take old electronics so they started bringing him stuff. He even has old medical equipment in there- stuff hospitals would've used. Needless to say- he never got any precious metals out of any of it- if he did it was so little it didn't matter. But he still has all that stuff, and tons of it is from the 60s and 70s. I've robbed a few tubes off him over the years, but he still has a pretty good size collection of them- mostly form TVs and stereos. And unfortunately, he's older now and unable to do anything with any of it. Not in the best health to be honest. I need to get with him and go through the stuff- pull out what might be useful- and holler at someone like yourself. Really though- I don't know what all might be useful- someone like you needs to come go through it- I'm pretty sure you would find some real gems in there. No idea where you're located but I'm in North Alabama- which is also unfortunate, but that's a different conversation.

I desolder boards by melting the solder on the pad and smacking the board on my bench. This removes enough solder for me to be able to hold resistors or diodes with my fingers and melt the little bit of remaining solder fast enough to not burn my fingers. "Icky Thump" is a good demo song for a fuzz.

Best channel on YT

Great video thanks

Nice!

Awesome!

5:40 - I'd want to make a fuzz with those top hat diodes!

The transistors being so close together could short as the cans are normally connected to the collector leg, one or both cans need to be insulated.

I noticed that some of the PCBs have solid gold alloy connectors on them. One of them looks the same as used for miller welders and aviation. If it is, then it is a $500.00 part.

What a neat project idea! As great as carefully planned projects with painstakingly sourced parts are, nothing beats the character of a good junkbox build! Bold move to not include a DC jack, but I suppose the originals didn't use one either. About the only thing that would make this better is if the enclosure was also from some old piece of equipment. Anyway, great work!

Nice build! It's getting harder to find those NPN Germaniums.

Cool build! But I have yet to find the area on ebay you found these boards! 😆

Some of those look like Motorola Micor (or MSR2000) repeater control cards. No metal card handles on any of them..?

Professor pq tem ter 2 transistores?

awesome. what did you use to shield the underside of the board? also, i think your music selections are pretty funny. haha

The guy who sold my AC 125s said modern devices can't really measure Ge transistors, do you agree with him?

Your collecting all the germanium you can find so you can phoooone hoooome !👽 Or teleport to McDonalds or something

It's funny how an absolutely terrible amplifier circuit is actually so awesome at making interesting music.

Cool, but man. Put a 9v on it lmao

all that time and it sounds that bad. Horrible actually.

TFW you build an NOS fuzz face then ruin the TONE by using an Amazon basics battery, smdh

Make an MXR Diſtortion Plus & a Marſhall in a box type pedal in þe ſame encloſure.