ZVex Fuzz Factory

Someone on a forum recently asked about a copy of the schematic for the ZVex Fuzz Factory. I had drawn up one last summer to contribute to the newly-christened Freestompboxes forum, but it contained a small mistake with the polarity of a capacitor and it was hosted on Photobucket, which has been really hard for me to work with. (Has anyone else out there had issues with Photobucket links not working correctly, etc…?)

So, without further adieu, I re-present the corrected schematic here, where it shall hopefully be easier for the seeker to discover.

I redrew this schematic from a hard-to-read one which I found randomly on a Japanese site – possibly fffworks, I don’t remember exactly, and it’s been compared up against gutshot pics which can be found at, Effector Repair.
At any rate, successful builds have been accomplished with the previous version of this schematic (the one dated June ’07), and there is no reason to doubt the potency of this one. DIY layouts and exhaustive discussion of this circuit can be found at Freestompboxes.org in the “Boutique” section.

While you’re at it, I highly recommend checking out Effector-Repair for some really top-notch photos of various highly-prized effects… with complete disassembly instructions. I have the highest respect for the Japanese DIY scene, their Practitioners take an especial pride in quality work.

Total Sonic Annihilation

A discussion of the Death By Audio – “Total Sonic Annihilation” recently came up in the Forum. Someone posted up a layout supposed traced from one. The device is a simple feedback looper intended to cause other stompboxes to go into a state of self-oscillation. This is a technique which has been used in the Noise community for many years and it’s nothing new to me. But, looking at the diagramme, there are several things which I would change to help make it a more useful device. I present to you here a more “correct” feedback looper which does exactly the same thing as the DBA Total Sonic Annihilation, but allows for a different type of total bypass of the oscillating device.

As you can see, the input of the loop is earthed during bypass, which makes sure that it stops oscillating when you bypass. Otherwise, the oscillations can infest the bypassed signal and cause trouble. Also, an additional small-value resistor has been added to the feedback loop to ensure that the output of the device in the loop doesn’t ever become totally shorted to ground, regardless of the setting of the control pot.

This design is slightly different inasmuch as it bypasses the entire effect. I think the DBA one has it so you are running through the looped effect all the time and the bypass switch just turns the feedback on and off. I can see that, but I was going for a different idea with my design. I will probably post up one like that later on today.