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Red Llama - Tube Sound Fuzz - build thread

#64
James Hart said:
again... what difference?

How exactly would the tant different?
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Well, if the tolerance on a resistor is say +/- 10%, that means your resistor on the positive side of the battery may be 110 ohms, or 90 ohms, your second stage feedback resistor may be 1 M, but might be 900K, or 1.1 M, making a difference in the gain of that stage. Same thing with the series 100K resistor in the feedback side of the first gain stage, if that is at the low end of the tolerance, and the pot is high, then you gain will be higher than you would expect using nominal values. Just look at Fuzzfaces. Some sound good, and some sound bad, even if they use the same type of transistor, just because of manufacturing tolerances. This is why you can buy gain matched transistors from places like Small Bear. You limit the tolerance range.

All I am saying is that I tried a couple tantalum caps, and really could not tell any difference, and that just the normal component tolerance would make a larger difference in sound, unless you carefully select them for a specific value. Sure, if you need a 1K resistor, you might measure 10, and pick the one closest to 1K, but most people will just grab one and go with it. I guess if you are concerned enough to carefully select every single component, maybe tantalum would make a difference, but for most of us, I seriously doubt it.

Sort of like basses. I have played a bunch of MIM P basses for example, some sounded and played okay, some were great, some just sucked. That is just the normal tolerance of all the components, but a good analogy in that the effect is a sum of all parts, and carefully selecting just a single component, probably won't make a huge difference in and of itself.

But, I am far, far from an expert, and I have plenty of questions that I currently need answers to as well, but I hope you love your TSF, mine is kicking! It makes a great "leave on all the time" gritty overdrive.
 
#66
I just got the Craig Anderton book which has the TSF project in it, around which the Llama is based. It suggests for the TSF, that tant or aluminium electrolytic will do, so I guess that this translates to the Llama. I imagine the cap just needs polarity to work right...
I've replaced electros with tants in a few Boss mods, and I've never yet heard a 'knock you down' difference in tone! There's a Bass Fuzz in that book too which I'm going to build up when I have a chance.
 
#78
guttermouth said:
the red llama can be used as both.here's a clip of mine that shows the range of the gain control :
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Great clips, and there's no arguing with that kind of evidence. That's pretty much what my clone sounds like too, so nice to have that aural reference point!
For my 2 pennies on this debate though, wasn't there a time when pretty much all distortion boxes were referred to as 'fuzz boxes', whether OD, distortion or fuzz?? Certainly from reading the CA book, he interchanges the terms, and for what it's worth, the description of the tube sound fuzz (in the book), is as follows: 'Recreates the types of distortion normally associated with tubes, but with a solid state design, for low current consumption, compactness and reliability.'
 
#79
holio cornolio said:
Great clips, and there's no arguing with that kind of evidence. That's pretty much what my clone sounds like too, so nice to have that aural reference point!
For my 2 pennies on this debate though, wasn't there a time when pretty much all distortion boxes were referred to as 'fuzz boxes', whether OD, distortion or fuzz?? Certainly from reading the CA book, he interchanges the terms, and for what it's worth, the description of the tube sound fuzz (in the book), is as follows: 'Recreates the types of distortion normally associated with tubes, but with a solid state design, for low current consumption, compactness and reliability.'
Click to expand...


yep - all the old school guys call everything that creates distortion of any type a "fuzz box".i think it stems from fuzzfaces being so prevalent and alot of guys using the volume on their guitar half cocked to get less of a gain increase out of them resulting in more of a distortion tone as opposed to full out "fuzz".not to mention the old school tech guys just seeing things getting clipped out on a scope with no idea of what it actually sounded like and just using one term to encompass any sort of clipping circuit (with differentiation only being made for square/triangle wave clipping).
 

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