Custom Shop: Fisher Price Fuzzes

Custom Shop: Fisher Price FuzzesAlright, here they are! We never know how to pick colors so we sort of just went for it on this one. 5 colors that we tried to match on a vintage 1960s Fisher Price Xylophone toy. Why? Why not? They look cool. So here's the deal. Colors: Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue Circuits: New Ones: Dizzy Fuzz (Elka Dizzy Tone clone), Silicon Fuzz (Silicon Fuzz Face clone) Others: Germanium Fuzz (Germanium Fuzz Face clone), Harmonic Fuzz (Interfax Harmonic

Alright, here they are! We never know how to pick colors so we sort of just went for it on this one. 5 colors that we tried to match on a vintage 1960s Fisher Price Xylophone toy. Why? Why not? They look cool. So here's the deal.

Colors:

Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue

Circuits:

New Ones: Dizzy Fuzz (Elka Dizzy Tone clone), Silicon Fuzz (Silicon Fuzz Face clone)

Others: Germanium Fuzz (Germanium Fuzz Face clone), Harmonic Fuzz (Interfax Harmonic Percolator clone), MKIII Fuzz (Tone Bender MkIII clone)

All Pedals Feature:

• Switchcraft jacks
• Carling DPDT switch (true bypass)
• Custom "Rotosound" pressed steel vintage style enclosure
• Custom powder coat and UV printing
• Turret/PCB hybrid construction
• SERIOUSLY nice machined aluminum knobs
• Dale Mil Spec and NOS Allen Bradley Carbon Comp resistors
• Battery power only (remove input jack to save battery, but current draw is very low)
• Due to the hand-made, 'vintage' nature of this product, there could be slight color variations and/or variations in the finish surface, transistors and capacitor markings, etc. 

Dizzy Fuzz Specs

• Recreated using a borrowed bench unit and the most reliable schematics we could find
• NOS Soviet Transistors in the first and second position, NOS Bulgarian SFT308 in the third (obviously hand selected and matched)
• Lovely, nasty fuzz with a mild gate and very interactive controls 
• Controls from left to right: Sustain, Attack, Balance

Silicon Fuzz Specs

• We've made about a jillion fuzz faces and we really like this configuration
• NOS transitors, likely BC182k, BC107, or similar (tuned to our bench example)
• Lovely sustain and character, no raspy or shrillness here
• Bias control adds extra flavor
• Controls from left to right: Volume, Bias, Fuzz

Germanium Fuzz Specs

• Similar to the silicon, but with a variety of fun, incredibly sounding NOS Germanium. Could be Soviet, Bulgarian, AC125, AC128, etc. 
• Bias control adds extra flavor
• Controls from left to right: Volume, Bias, Fuzz

Harmonic Fuzz

• We tried to recreate this one as accurately as possible based on available info (plus two fun clipping options). This circuit is kind of a meme at this point since there seems to be no consensus on the "right" version since many original units sounded wildly different and had different values
• NOS 2n404a Germanium and Fairchild 2N3565 Silicon transistors
• Controls from left to right: Balance (volume), Clipping (looks like a knob but is a NOS rotary switch!) from left to right: stock Germanium, Spruce mode, no diodes, Harmonics (distortion level)

MkIII Fuzz

• The MkIII Tone Bender is probably the most well behaved one and the one we like the best. The best sounding one we've ever played is the DAM Grease Box. 
• Variety of transistors: Soviet, Mullard, etc.
• Tone control is smooth and an internal trim pot controls how gnarly the fuzz gets

We don't own or intend to confuse anyone by using the brand name "Fisher Price". We just like ROYGBIV. We also don't own any of the other brand names or circuit names and if you're confused by that, we don't know what to tell you.