# Hoof/Ungula



## Flipguitarist (Sep 27, 2019)

Fired right up no issues whatsoever. Volume could be louder. Other than that I like it.


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## DGWVI (Sep 27, 2019)

You could reduce the value of R22 to get some more gain out of the last stage


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## Jovi Bon Kenobi (Sep 27, 2019)

Hella purdy


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## Flipguitarist (Sep 27, 2019)

DGWVI said:


> You could reduce the value of R22 to get some more gain out of the last stage


Will try to do that but it’s such a bitch to get it out of the enclosure and I hate accidentally pulling wires ?? What value resistor is ideal for R22? Thanks for the suggestion.


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## DGWVI (Sep 27, 2019)

Flipguitarist said:


> Will try to do that but it’s such a bitch to get it out of the enclosure and I hate accidentally pulling wires ?? What value resistor is ideal for R22? Thanks for the suggestion.


Once you get it pulled, and the pads clear, try a few different values. I'd start with 1k, nd adjust as needed


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## Chuck D. Bones (Oct 1, 2019)

Mine's pretty freakin' loud.  This is the unity volume setting on my Ungula with fairly hot humbuckers.  It's pretty damned bassy too.






I did change my LEVEL pot to A100K.  I respect Jamie Stillman's designs, but a 1M volume pot makes no sense to me.  Whatever follows your Ungula may be loading it down.  A lower value LEVEL pot might just fix that.  You can up the gain in the last stage as DGWVI suggested, but you should adjust the bias if you change R22.  Otherwise, you'll lose some headroom.  Where did you get your 2N1308s?  You might want to check the bias on those, in case they are too leaky.  The 2N3108s are biased hot in this circuit, and if the leakage is too high, they'll saturate before the LEDs can conduct.  On mine, the collector voltages for Q2 and Q3 are approx 2.7V.  If they get under 2V, then there's a problem.  If you want to try upping the gain on the last stage, you can use some clip leads and temporarily jumper a 2.2K resistor in parallel with R22.  See if that gets you where you wanna go without pulling the board.  Check the date code on those vintage 2N1308's: 134 = 34th week of 1971.  Wish I had more o' those!


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## Flipguitarist (Oct 1, 2019)

Chuck D. Bones said:


> Mine's pretty freakin' loud.  This is the unity volume setting on my Ungula with fairly hot humbuckers.  It's pretty damned bassy too.
> 
> View attachment 1612
> 
> I did change my LEVEL pot to A100K.  I respect Jamie Stillman's designs, but a 1M volume pot makes no sense to me.  Whatever follows your Ungula may be loading it down.  A lower value LEVEL pot might just fix that.  You can up the gain in the last stage as DGWVI suggested, but you should adjust the bias if you change R22.  Otherwise, you'll lose some headroom.  Where did you get your 2N1308s?  You might want to check the bias on those, in case they are too leaky.  The 2N3108s are biased hot in this circuit, and if the leakage is too high, they'll saturate before the LEDs can conduct.  On mine, the collector voltages for Q2 and Q3 are approx 2.7V.  If they get under 2V, then there's a problem.  If you want to try upping the gain on the last stage, you can use some clip leads and temporarily jumper a 2.2K resistor in parallel with R22.  See if that gets you where you wanna go without pulling the board.


I


Chuck D. Bones said:


> Mine's pretty freakin' loud.  This is the unity volume setting on my Ungula with fairly hot humbuckers.  It's pretty damned bassy too.
> 
> View attachment 1612
> 
> I did change my LEVEL pot to A100K.  I respect Jamie Stillman's designs, but a 1M volume pot makes no sense to me.  Whatever follows your Ungula may be loading it down.  A lower value LEVEL pot might just fix that.  You can up the gain in the last stage as DGWVI suggested, but you should adjust the bias if you change R22.  Otherwise, you'll lose some headroom.  Where did you get your 2N1308s?  You might want to check the bias on those, in case they are too leaky.  The 2N3108s are biased hot in this circuit, and if the leakage is too high, they'll saturate before the LEDs can conduct.  On mine, the collector voltages for Q2 and Q3 are approx 2.7V.  If they get under 2V, then there's a problem.  If you want to try upping the gain on the last stage, you can use some clip leads and temporarily jumper a 2.2K resistor in parallel with R22.  See if that gets you where you wanna go without pulling the board.


nice build! I don’t know how to measure or bias things. I can follow instructions and diagrams. Got my tranny’s at usource.net they’re based in China. They get bad reviews but what do I know? All I know is the transistor(s) I bought worked for the pedal. I’m gonna try to do all suggestions likely tomorrow or Sunday. ?


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## Barry (Oct 1, 2019)

Nice!


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## Chuck D. Bones (Oct 1, 2019)

Thanks for the lead!  I just placed an order for some GE trannys at UTsource.  I'll let you know how it turns out.


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## moonlightpedalbuilds (Oct 1, 2019)

I used MP38s from Bulgaria. Sounds great.
Q2 3.66v
Q3 2.7v


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## Flipguitarist (Oct 1, 2019)

Chuck D. Bones said:


> Thanks for the lead!  I just placed an order for some GE trannys at UTsource.  I'll let you know how it turns out.


No problem. And thanks for always being helpful as well


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## Chuck D. Bones (Oct 31, 2019)

My UTSource transistors came in a couple of days ago.  At first blush I am disappointed and will not be placing any more orders with them.  
My transistor tester tells me that out of the 20 Ge transistors I bought...
2 of the "2N1309s" are dead - completely non-functional
The "2N1308s" and "2N1309s" appear to be germanium, based on Vbe
7 appear to have E & C swapped
All of the functional so-called "2N1309s" are too leaky to use
All but one of the so-called "2N1308s" have HFE way below spec.
The "2N1308" and "2N1309" have the same K0424 LDC, very suspicious.
When I find my curve tracer, I'm going to verify the transistor tester results and probably seek remedy from Paypal.


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## Flipguitarist (Oct 31, 2019)

Sorry to hear about that. I don’t know what leaky or any of all that means lol but yeah man if you’re not happy dispute it. I haven’t had issue getting my money back from them. So when transistors are no good and installed in the board how bad will they sound?


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## Chuck D. Bones (Oct 31, 2019)

How an out of spec transistors sounds in a particular pedal really depends on the circuit.  With Ge, I'll always pop them in the transistor tester first because they are so variable and different circuits require the Ge transistors to do different things.  Si transistors I don't worry about because they're very consistent.  Unless they come from a questionable supplier.


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## Chuck D. Bones (Nov 5, 2019)

After some back & forth, UTsource refunded me the cost of the 18 bad transistors.  I will not recommend them, there are too many good sources for Ge transistors.  I have yet to find a good source for 1N34As.  The ones I got from from Tayda and Guitar Pedal Parts are _fugazi_.


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## K Pedals (Nov 6, 2019)

Chuck D. Bones said:


> After some back & forth, UTsource refunded me the cost of the 18 bad transistors.  I will not recommend them, there are too many good sources for Ge transistors.  I have yet to find a good source for 1N34As.  The ones I got from from Tayda and Guitar Pedal Parts are _fugazi_.











						1N34A NOS Germanium Diode ITT 1N34
					

1N34A NOS Germanium Diode ITT 1N34



					www.pedalhackerelectronics.com


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## Chuck D. Bones (Nov 6, 2019)

Thnx.  You told me about those guys before.  4head smack for me.


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## K Pedals (Nov 6, 2019)

Chuck D. Bones said:


> Thnx.  You told me about those guys before.  4head smack for me.


I haven’t tried those particular ones but I’m sure they’re legit... everything from him I’ve got has been good... takes him awhile to ship your stuff out though...


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## bengarland (Apr 12, 2020)

Chuck D. Bones said:


> After some back & forth, UTsource refunded me the cost of the 18 bad transistors.  I will not recommend them, there are too many good sources for Ge transistors.  I have yet to find a good source for 1N34As.  The ones I got from from Tayda and Guitar Pedal Parts are _fugazi_.



When you ordered from UTsource, were they the listed supplier or was it a 3rd party source? (usually with a Chinese name). I've ordered from UTsource, with all parts "from UTsource", and so far I haven't seen any obviously bad / non-working parts, even for some of the harder to find stuff like MN3101 chips and 1S1588 diodes. Then again, I'm a total newbie at all of this and I don't really know what to test for. I tried to stick to stuff that was listed as genuine parts ("Toshiba", "Fairchild" etc) and so far so good, I guess?

But yeah, their reasonable prices and apparent large stock of otherwise hard to find parts does seem a bit "too good to be true" ?


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## Chuck D. Bones (Apr 12, 2020)

UTsource is the name of the company that accepted my money and issued the refund.  If there were any 3rd parties involved, I don't know and don't care at this point.  It's possible not all of their parts are crap.  I have too many good suppliers to ever waste my time with them again.

You have no way of knowing what is genuine unless you buy from a manufacturer authorized distributor.  The counterfeiters are very good at disguising fake or substandard parts.  It should be no surprise that someone who sells counterfeit parts is going to lie and say a part is genuine.  It is a serious problem across the electronics industry.


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## Kroars (Apr 12, 2020)

Chuck D. Bones said:


> After some back & forth, UTsource refunded me the cost of the 18 bad transistors.  I will not recommend them, there are too many good sources for Ge transistors.  I have yet to find a good source for 1N34As.  The ones I got from from Tayda and Guitar Pedal Parts are _fugazi_.



I’m curious about this comment. I’ve purchased 1N34a’s from a few places (from Smallbear to Amazon). Is there a way to test them with a multifunction meter to see if what I have are ok? I’ve used them in a few builds already and they sound good to me. Although, with my lack of knowledge on how particular builds “should” sound I’m curious if they can sound better with different 1N34a’s. The ones I’ve used all look the same, the small Orange with black stripe like these:

(Pack of 20 Pieces) Chanzon 1N34A 1N34 Germanium Diode 50mA 65V DO-35 (DO-204AH) IN34A IN34 Axial for TV FM AM Radio Detection https://www.amazon.com/dp/B079KJVKTT/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_0NZKEbBQSCRZA


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## Chuck D. Bones (Apr 12, 2020)

What did your Small Bear 1N34A's look like?  All of the real Ge diodes I have are in a clear glass case about the size of a 1/2W resistor, except some D2x Russian diodes in a painted glass case.

If the datasheet is to be believed, then those Chanzon diodes are germanium.  But they sure look like Schottkys in that tiny orange package.  For $6, it's worth the gamble.

The easiest way I know of to discriminate between germanium and Schottky diodes is to measure Vf with a multimeter at different temperatures. Vf has a negative tempco in all diodes, meaning that when the temperature goes up, Vf goes down.  Ge diodes are very temperature sensitive.  Connect the diode to your multimeter and watch the Vf reading.   When it stabilizes, put two fingers around to diode to warm it up.  The Vf on Ge diodes will drop rapidly and a lot more than 10mV.

I took these measurements just now:
fugazi 1N34A from GPP: Vf @ room temp = 264mV.  Vf warmed up with fingers: 253mV - 11mV change
fugazi 1N34A from Tayda: Vf @ room temp = 302mV.  Vf warmed up with fingers: 289mV - 13mV change
green band 1N34A: Vf @ room temp = 274mV.  Vf warmed up with fingers: 252mV - 22mV change


To be fair, in some circuits Schottky diodes will work as well as, or better than germanium.  For instance, in an octave circuit like the Squidward, Foxx Fuzz Tone (octave portion only) or Parenthesis (octave portion only).  Some people even prefer Schottky over germanium for clipping diodes.


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