Valvetron: Aussie Fuzz (with EQD Dispatch Master & ROLA JTM45)
71http://www.guitaraust.com.au/specials/aussie-fuzz-stomp-box.html
https://reverb.com/marketplace?query=valvetron+aussie+fuzz+eqd+dispatch+master+rola+jtm45&_aid=kingman
Remember the video I made for the ROLA JTM-45? It's a very cool piece of amp-building. The Aussie Fuzz is built by the same guy, Graham Dicker. It also is the business. There's a good story behind it so I'm going to hand it over to Graham...
"This is an all valve fuzz stompbox, no transistors, fets or IC's anywhere. It does not pretend to be valve or tube-like sound as it is an all valve design , the REAL THING. I went looking on the web for an all valve fuzzbox, and short of paying half a killobuck for something that had op amps, transistors or fets in it was impossible to find. Plenty of ideas on the web, but after trying half a dozen favourite circuits none of them sounded just right or were symmetrical clipping. Those that were ended up flat topped like a transistor fuzz box not nicely compressed, or needed careful selection of valves to get it to work properly. So it was R&D time in the VALVE AMP BATCAVE. I tried all the twin triodes 12AU7, 12AT7, 12AX7, all with one or more problems. I tried an old but trusty valve clipper using a 6AL5 twin diode. That got some good results but was nearly impossible to drive with a simple triode stage. A favourite for low voltage operation was the 6ES8 a TV tuner valve with a lowplate resistance. This worked out rather well, but for some fiddly anode resistance values or having to buildsomething full of trimpots (did I mention I hate trimpots - more to tweek and just go wrong or fail). Stay with me here, the story is long and complicated BUT !!!! I eventually came up with the holy grail of fuzz box circuits, the most abundant valve in the world - the 6BL8 triode pentode. Yes, you can buy them NOS Philips or AWA made in Australia and really cheap at about $10 each. AH-HA !!!!! Where this is going? This fuzz box does not emulate or sound like anything else. It has its own unique sound qualities with an entirely Australian flavour, hence the name AUSSIE-FUZZ. If you have been around long enough to remember the 60's you will know about Moody, Goldentone, Strauss and a lot of other amps of that time. Many were variants of the Electronics Australia Playmaster 116 kit amp. I know because I built a hundred or so... Back to AUSSIE-FUZZ, one of the reasons these amps sounded so good was the use of the 6BL8 as a phase splitter and voltage amp. The pentode the voltage amp which made the sound kind of British and the triode as the phase splitter. Simple enough (BTW the other reasons they sounded good were the great output transformers made by Ferguson and A&R transformers). So that's where the design is right now - a nice pentode preamp followed by a triode output stage with buckets of gain, and it's all symmetrical. After trying 20 different valves at random in the prototype AUSSIE-FUZZ, there was very little difference in the way it behaved and sounded. This is all a good thing.
Features of the AUSSIE-FUZZ
1) Simple
2) low cost
3) no frills just great sound
4) rugged as heck (you could almost drive a truck over it and have it survive)
5) Roadie proof
6) comes with a quality analogue plugpack (no switchmodes here)7) cheap and readily available valves
8) high gain
9) symmetrical nice sounding clipping (more like a form of compression)
10) valve amp happy, input impedance is 100K output impedance is 100K
11) happily works alongside other stompboxes and FX
12) does not load down your guitar
13) bypass type stompbox
14) two gain controls INPUT and OUTPUT to give you lots of sound variations
15) high quality FR2 PCB
16) quality Rhoderstein resistors and EVOX capacitors (from Europe)
17) ALPS A2 pots
18) solid die cast box
Each Aussie-Fuzz takes around 3 hours to build, each one is hand built and fully tested for 3 hours to make sure it meets specifications. Special custom version builds are available including tone stacks, balanced DI outputs to a PA, or to use as a recording DI or guitar preamp, POA. Any questions about the Aussie-Fuzz or any of my products you can call me anytime at
Valvetron on 08-82703175 or 0414323099."