Was this Beginner's Luck or did I just discover another bloody talent......

...to complexity my life. Really, I can build guitars and basses, work on outdoor power equiptment, technology, household handyman stuff.....now I'm starting to get this good at electronics....WTF, thanks for making my choices of what to do with my life even harder now.

This project started upon joining the Eddie Sweaters in early 2017, I found that since we are a 90's cover band and 90's bands are a bit, uh "Grungy", and my amp setup is setup for clean, biting, crisp, toasty brown tube-driven overdrive, I kind of needed a muddy, noisy, chaotic fuzz pedal of some kind to get some of that "Grunge" back in my life....

So I assessed the cost of buying a new Fuzz Pedal, in particular, the BOSS FZ-2 Hyper Fuzz, and thought to myself...."Why do I want to pay $150.00 for $55 of parts and a nameplate.....if it works for guitars, maybe it works for pedals too". The final thing was seeing DIY Guitar Pedals on Youtube make a fuzz pedal in 5 minutes.

So $99 in my pocket and that kind of extended alone-time needy project wants and I started work on my biggest project in a long time - building my first pedal. And of course, like always, I dream big, and take on what would be more than anyone could chew for most people.

Over the course of 3-4 months, I breadboarded up my own fuzz, using several circuits such as DIY Pedals 5 minute Fuzz, the Big Muff (various versions), Univox Super Fuzz, and the Fuzz Face, as a guide, but not at all copying them. Instead of Germanium transistors sourced from a reputable pedal supplier - I sourced all my stuff from Vetco in Bellevue WA.

The pedal got it's name "FazzFuzz" or "FNaF Fuzz" or "Freddy Fuzzbear's Pedal" off the fact that during development, the ultimate final number of Transistors became a total of 5 - which just so happens to match the number of Homocidal Animatronics in the Scott Cawthon modern indie classic computer game Five Nights at Freddys, so each Transistor is named after an Animatronic, and all but Freddy can be taken out of the circuit, giving a wide variety of sounds, and the adjustable voltage and currents applied to such give some insane versitility. the Transistors consist of 3 50,000 hFE BC517's and a pair of 300 hFE BC333's - giving a sound like no other pedal on the planet as I've never heard or seen a design that uses this many transistors, let alone these specific variants.

So let's talk now about how this pedal works and why I'm so happy with it.....

The controls are as follows from Left to Right

TOP ROW: Jumpscare (Volume), Negativity (-Voltage or Q2-Q5 to Ground off Emitter), Freddy (Freddy's Input Voltage - Q1), Power (The Total Voltage going into the Pedal), and Teeth (Gain)

MIDDLE ROW: these 4 switches either direct the Emitter of Q2-Q4 to a fixed value resistor, or the Negativity control - Golden Freddy (Q5), Foxy (Q4), Chica (Q3), and Bonnie (Q2) from Left to Right.

BOTTOM ROW: Far Right Slide Switch controls the input capacitor giving the pedal a more "distortion" like voice or a more "fuzz" like voice. The Far left slide switch changes how the Volume contrll roll-off works by retaining the treble frequencies or not, allowing the volume to also act as a tone control, which works well as this pedal is EXTREMELY hot in output.

BUTTONS: Left = Permanant On/Off, Middle = Switches between Permanant and Momentary Operation, Right = Momentary On/Off, later versions I plan to omit the center button because I figured out a way to make this work without a "mode" switch. There is a bright red Indicator LED I sourced from a dead VCR in the middle above Bonnie's head on the artwork (center) that indicates when the pedal is off or on.

The pedal can run off of 5-15VDC at 1mA or lower either off a 9V battery, or off a Power Supply. Currently I'm using a 9VDC at 300mA power supply on it, center positive - which I need to reverse for my pedalboard and to meet standard BOSS pedal requirements if I'm ever to start making these for sale.

The amount of sounds this thing can get, due to the variable positive/negative current flow and voltage levels, and all the input/output options provided makes for a very versatile device ranging from a great booster to a insane noise machine that would make someone like Trent Reznor or Captain Beefheart proud. So it's a bit more than just your regular, run-of-the-mill Fuzz Pedal.

Using just the input stage gives a very traditional fuzz that can range from slightly lower output with good crispiness with full voltage, to muddy, angry, dark grungy fuzz with a nice even gain. HIgh output pickups really drive this thing to crazy levels, especially active pickups. And because the gain is not so over-the-top it can also be stacked or layered over other pedals or a already great sounding Tube Amp to add some "mud" or some other tonal chracteristics unattainable any other way.

The Bonnie switch switches between a resistor and the variable positive switch. Bonnie creates these frantic blippy computer-like oscillations that would be good to use as some kind of junky lo-fi sequencer setting, or some kind of broken synthesizer sound. Turning the negativity up and down makes his more or less extreme or changes the behavior quite a bit.

The Chica Switch acts more as a stabilizer. The set resistor is a 1Meg Resistor that basically adds a hair more gain and takes away some presense. However, the negative control is a bit more useless on this setting up to a certain point ebcause it basically cuts the whole signal off or sends it to ground, I plan to fix this by putting another 1MEG between the switch and the pot so that I can have up to 2MEGs of control on the negative side making the pot more useful.

The Foxy and Freddy Switches Add more gain and an alement of chaos to the pedal. In set mode the pedal becomes more quiet but a bit more aggressive as well.

And combining these can do all sorts of things from raspy, distorted, messy industrial sounds, to an almost perfect square wave, to strange Atari-2600-Arpeggiator effects added to the note decays. Messier and glitichier settings filled with noisy artifacts can be controlled by using the momentary footswitch to turn the pedal on as needed, weather you want to add an Atari-2600 type decay to the end of a guitar solo, or create brief chaotic sound bytes to add texture to a piece.

That said, very satisfied with my first pedal and first original pedal design. It has it's quirks, flaws, and some revisions I need to make to make the next one better - but despite it's been a very usable, very fun, and crazy tool and toy in my effects setup since I built it. I plan to build more of these.