The fuzz face is one of the most famous guitar pedals of all time, going back to the good ol' Jimi Hendrix. I wanted to try and set out to make this circuit for my self. This was also my first foray into PCB fabrication and all the parts that surround that.

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     For the schematic itself, I used a circuit from Beavis Audio that is based on the classic Dallas Arbiter Fuzz Face. This specific schematic uses NPN transistors, but I know some other designs use PNP transistors. The only switch I made is instead of using BC108 transistors, I opted for 2N3904's since I had them on hand and I wanted to see what difference they would make (though the circuit works for any NPN transistor, so I may try making a version that allows you to swap between different types).

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     I started out by just making a stripboard version to make sure the circuit worked and get a sense of what the build was like. I went ahead and mounted this in a custom case I made in the style of the classic round, "smiley" fuzz faces. Once I was finished with that, I went ahead and started working on the PCB design. I used KiCad for all of my schematic and PCB fabrication in this project. There was quite a learning curve with this for me as it was not something I had done before, but luckily this was part of an assignment for a class so I had help from my professor in getting started with the software.

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     After double and triple checking everything, I sent the files off to be fabricated (in purple of course). Once the boards arrived, I just whipped up a quick case for it in TinkerCad. Then I printed the case, soldered everything, and mounted it all. When making the PCB, I wanted to go for a smaller and rectangular design, but this could easily fit in the bigger circle enclosure if preferred.

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     Overall, I'm happy with how this project all worked out. I was able to really get started with PCB fabrication, get even more practice with designing enclosures, and got a pretty sick fuzz out of it too. In the future if I want to make some improvements, I definitely see some areas I could work on. First, I would want to try and work on the PCB design itself. I think I could make the design much more compact and I could also make it much more easily mountable in a case. I think I was just a little timid for my first go-through since I really didn't want to mess anything up. I would also like to try out the different transistors, like I said earlier, and see what the big difference between different types would be. Maybe there's a perfect soulmate transistor just out there waiting for me. But in the end, this one gets a big stamp of approval from me.

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