What is on your workbench Tinkerers?

[vanguard]

Jesus H, that's a bit beyond a "once over," amigo. Beautiful work!

[Doc Holliday]

Great stuff

[jreeves47]

bravo!

[redeyeflight]

Looks great!!

[Laundromat]

How do they sound?

I felt I was able to match the sound of my grey one pretty well. They're pretty gainy with a good and clear cleanup, and no mush. Nick's is pretty special in the sense that the volume pot is really close to the nominal value, which is pretty rare base on what I've seen.

[superslidetail]

I've only ever had one and it was way too gated for me. Not unusable but not something I particularly liked. Total shot in the dark if you get a good one unless you can play it before you buy.

[vanguard]

I've only ever had one and it was way too gated for me. Not unusable but not something I particularly liked. Total shot in the dark if you get a good one unless you can play it before you buy.

Man, I've wanted an original FF for ages, but this is exactly what scares me off. I imagine most of the units still being shifted around are on the market because they sound some degree of shit.

[Laundromat]

I think I've had six vintage Fuzz Faces so far, two of which with NKTs. Only one of them with silicon transistors was something that I felt didn't sound very good. Both of the germanium ones sound fucking ace and I'd have a hard time deciding which one to part with if it came to that. It's probably the only reason why I haven't sold one of them, seeing what kind of silly prices they command right now.

I'm sure they differ from one to the next, but also feel that the usual line of "having to go through dozen of them to find one that sounds good" is complete and utter horseshit. My grey one sounded like crap when I got it, but only because someone had showed up high at work and soldered in a completely wrong value resistor. But as far as the transistor selection goes, I think they knew what they were doing and not just slapping them in by random.

[jreeves47]

I think if you buy all original it still has value even if it doesn't sound how you want and can be resold.
I also think that the ones that sound bad might have a simple fix- i would first check for faulty solder joints on the wiring. Every time the battery is changed there is tension on the whole wiring harness. i suspect many fuzz faces that wound up with changed parts may have just needed some connections fixed.

[superslidetail]

Mine had NKT's, just felt like if I could tweak the bias a hair it would have been to my liking.