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The Repair
Begins
As can be seen
in the photos, an attempt in my teens to liven up my unit
resulted in a pretty bad paint job. As far as I could remember,
the unit had always worked so in theory should be easy to
get going.
Well my assumption
was wrong, upon opening the device I found several loose wires,
a faulty battery snap, and all the connectors looked quite
dull and rusty. Also a couple of the electronic components
on the board seemed to have come loose.
The first step was to disassemble
the unit, I cleaned up the input/sockets and re-soldered and
replaced several wires which were intermittently faulty. (see
Appendix A for solder tips)
This however
did not repair the unit. I then proceeded to research this
unit on the internet, in the hope of finding some photos on
the circuit and wiring. However, all the ones I did come across
where of a different version of the circuit board that on
my version of the pedal.
Then as luck
would have it I stumbled on a posting on a forum, from the
creator of a replica of my fuzz unit, the Wattson-FX
company. This showed a photo of an original Shin-ei
unit with a circuit board identical to mine. The photo helped
tremendously and I also emailed a message to the manufacturer
who happens to be a fuzz enthusiast and electronics expert.
He replied with
specific instructions on the repair involving the input wiring
which was incorrect. Many thanks to Jim
"The Amp Surgeon" Sproul
from Wattson
Classic Electronics.
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Wattson Super Fuzz Front
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Wattson Super Rear
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Original Duo Fuzz
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Shin-ei
Fuzz
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We also hope
to be reviewing the Wattson Fuzz
units in the near future.
I plugged the
unit in and …..no sound…..then a
brief flicker of that chain saw fuzz came to life and fizzled
out again.
Nearly there I thought.
I then checked
all my wiring again for continuity and that was fine, but
upon inspecting the circuit board I noticed two components
where loose. One was a green polyester film capacitor that
had simply come loose so I soldered that on, the second was
an electrolytic capacitor that would fire up the circuit when
touched. This component even upon re-soldering had the same
problem, so it seemed the capacitor itself was faulty, possibly
a loose connection on one of the legs.
I had a look
through some old circuit boards and found a capacitor of the
same specification on the circuit board from a discarded mouse.
With this I replaced the intermittent component and finally
let there be sound!
Sounds
The fuzz unit
sounds exactly how I remembered it, buzzy
and chainsaw like further accented by my Telecasters ice-pick
tone and single coil pickups. Tone 1 seems slightly scooped
whilst with Tone 2 all hell breaks loose and your hands simply
want to pick away the riffs to “Satisfaction” or “You Really
Got Me”.
Have a listen
to the mp3 examples below. These where recorded with a 1968
Telecaster and also for comparison with a Double Cut Les Paul
with p-90 pickups.
1968
Telecaster Demo
P90 Les Paul Demo
Summary
An interesting
and nostalgic project, the next step will be to either expose
the original finish of the housing or repaint to original
specifications. The Duo–Fuzz lives again!
By Ernest. H. Slade
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