Vox tone bender - two knobs and three silicon transistors. It's kind of a silicon MKII with clipping diodes on the output. It’s loaded with a Jen FZ III circuit, which I wasn’t aware that it was ever used in a Vox.
Photos from someone that grabbed a fuzz from me recently - Initially I had no idea what the circuit was, so I thought I'd post it here.
While I was working on another fuzz face layout (the Sonus Jimi Mod 1968), I thought I might do a quick adaptation for the Vox Tone Bender, as there was room for the additional resistor.
Quite fond of the Vox, so I'll probably build this once I've finished my current project. Usually I like to increase the size of the output cap, as these can be a little on this this side / harsh on the ears. A small cap across the collector and base of Q1 can also help with this.
Some notes for later from a recent Vox Tone Bender build. Mainly wanted to jot down the placement of the pots and switch, as this layout is quite tight in a 1590BB - there’s no room for error. I probably should have made the layout a row or two shorter, but I just liked the symmetry of it.
Graphics were done by converting photos to vector files, with a few manual tweaks
 |
After realising I had the "right" transistors for this, I thought I should have a crack at a Vox Tone Bender.
I've done a generic vero layout with room for mods, with some common values listed - I guess the most obvious is the external bias pot, which could be replaced with a standard 8k2 resistor.
The D*A*M 1966 Italian Tone Bender has a Super Bee vs '66 mod, which is just a switch with a 47k resistor to ground from volume 3 (using a 470k pot) - reducing bass. It's an easy way to capture the sound of some of the common variants out there.
And if you're thinking, what's the point, it's just a Fuzz Face - well, that's true to some extent, but sonically there are some differences, as you can see from the plots below.
This of course, doesn't consider the differences in character provided by different transistor combinations - LTspice doesn't have a huge range of vintage transistors to choose from, and unlike real germanium transistors, everyone has identical hfe and leakage.
The Buzzaround's Italian cousin - the Elka Dizzy Tone. Extremely similar, some are seen with a 1M Attack pot. This layout is based on the D*A*M Fuzz Sound MKIII layout.
Also known as the JHS & Ricken's Fuzz - the JEN FZ III Fuzz is a simple silicon variation on a Tone Bender MKII.
First things first - this is reported to be very bright, so maybe increase the 10n capacitors to something a little larger to let more lows through, or add a 10n to ground before Q1 to cut the highs (like a Tone Bender). However, if you increase the caps too much, it could all turn to mush. Increasing the 1.2nf cap has also been suggested. Yet to breadboard this one, so I don't have a firm opinion either way.
I haven't been able to spot the value, but I have seen some examples where the diodes look like Schottky diodes (blue and black).
