Plutonium Fuzz….Meltdown in a box

Fuzz pedals have been around for over forty years now. They were among the first pedals us guitarists had to use to create the distorted rock and roll sound we all love. A few years ago while learning the ropes of pedal building I built the Plutonium Fuzz. It was based on Fuzz Central's Axis Face which was a Fuzz Face variant. I did some tweaks based on information found on the various DIY sites and ended up with a really cool pedal.

I've had the schematic and perf board layout on the DIY stompboxes forum for a while but I think it's time I put it here for everyone to see.


The Schematic

The Layout



The Lowdown

This Fuzz is not subtle. It is not completely out of control either. It has lots of gain but with careful tweaking of the controls you can get a great maxed out fuzz sound while still maintaining some clarity and minimizing noise.

When building this there are a few things to be careful of. Make sure your input and output wires are as short as possible. Also don't let the input and outputs cross. Nor should you let any signal carrying wires cross the power supply wires.

 Fuzz circuits are a magnet for noise and you will be faced with some ugly hum, his and oscillation if your are not careful.

Here’s a link to a video demo from my old guitar blog days…..yes I probably talked too much
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDbTzIldEY4