Buttercup Fuzz

An absolute doozy of a fuzz from Freestompboxes member J D Barbato.

Basically a mash-up of Tone Bender Mk II and Mk III, topped off with a Big Muff style tone stack. It just works. You can nail most of the essential tones of both with some tweaking of the gain, butter (fuzz) and tone controls. The latter is flippable with the toggle switch, giving a different range of frequency fun.

Designed for a set of NPN germanium transistors, but works just as well with a silicon BJT in Q3 - so that's what we're providing with the kit.

Good NPN germaniums are hard to come by nowadays, so we can't give a definitive guide to what we'll provide. It'll be a mix of Russian cans or 2N3102, 2N3108, AC187 etc.

The kit is supplied with vertical-mount pots which have round shafts, so you'll need set-screw fitting knobs.

If you want the PCB without parts there's a link for that at the bottom of the page.

Partial kit: PCB, all board-mounted components, pots.

Full kit: As above, plus footswitch and appropriate daughterboard/components for your selected bypass type (see Downloads section for details of those), jack sockets, DC socket, battery snap, hook-up wire, LED.

Enclosure (pre-drilled) is available as an option with full kits, and will not take a battery. Knobs are not included.

Builds are only available with full kits including enclosures and vertical-mount pots. Please choose appropriate knobs.

Inspired by: Fender&TM; Blender&TM;

Difficulty: Medium

PCB size: 50 x 50mm

Knobs required: 4

Enclosure: 1590B

Direct-Connect compatible (4-way)

Download the INSTRUCTION PDF