I have some old germanium transistors that were removed from some high end old test equipment. I'd like to try to try them in a simple germanium guitar fuzz pedal. I've heard that these can sound good when used at a certain temperature, but can "flub out" when the temperature changes. What I've never heard is . . . do they prefer lower temperature or higher temperature? Or, is it a matter of operation at the same temperature they were biased at?
Thanks all.
Thanks all.
They "can" be biased to work well at any reasonable temperature. If not well-designed, they will go off-bias at any other temperature.
Cooler is often easier than hot, but for a July 4 picnic/party in Jax FLA you have no choice.
The guys who invented these things knew less than you. Bench-racing is a waste of time. Just throw it together and experiment.
BTW: BBC, RCA, and many others made Ge preamps which worked about the same in any temperature a person would work in. Using more parts and a "distortion-free" goal.
Cooler is often easier than hot, but for a July 4 picnic/party in Jax FLA you have no choice.
The guys who invented these things knew less than you. Bench-racing is a waste of time. Just throw it together and experiment.
BTW: BBC, RCA, and many others made Ge preamps which worked about the same in any temperature a person would work in. Using more parts and a "distortion-free" goal.
Thanks for that info. You may laugh at me for this idea, but I was thinking of making an "ultra-deluxe" germanium fuzz. Peltier devices can be had that are postage stamp sized. Some DC fans are close to that. I thought I might enclose the Ge transistor, or two, in a marshmallow-sized cooler.
I'm retired and clearly have too much time on my hands. 🤓
This idea comes up on pedal-forums, where builders can be quite obsessed. I have not seen a full-done thermostat pedal.
Ge pedals were very variable in the day. They say Hendrix would go through a whole crate of pedals to find one or two he liked.
If you play-out, a Si FuzzFace or Pie, or a DSP box, are real practical. I guess not your thing.
Ge pedals were very variable in the day. They say Hendrix would go through a whole crate of pedals to find one or two he liked.
If you play-out, a Si FuzzFace or Pie, or a DSP box, are real practical. I guess not your thing.
Seems obvious.
If you make a Ge fuz boxz, it would be nice to remain in the spirit of the thing, and dispense with silly (and noisy) accessories.
All semi's obey the same law, based on kT°/q, and the only things that change are the ideality factor, the saturation current and the perfection of the process (or the lack thereof).
Ge devices tended to be crude by today's standards, with the exception of costly UHF transistors, but the crudeness is part of the Ge sound, and if you try to sanitize them too much, you will lose that special character.
As PRR said, a Ge design can be made to work at any reasonable temperature: think of IBM and their SMS modules dating back from the early sixties which used thousands of Ge transistors assembled to make early mainframe computers.
They worked without problem (mostly), and with less than half a dozen of them, you should have an easy task