Jen Double Sound Fuzz Wah

Couldn't really find a good description of this pedal other then it's a Fuzz-Wah produced in the 70's by Jen. Here's my take based on the schematic. Just like many of the other fuzz wahs I've seen and working on layouts for this is essentially a classic inductor wah with a fuzzface type fuzz. There's a few differences I've noticed compared to a lot of the others. First, there is no control over the amount of output of the fuzz, ie it's set. Second, unlike a lot of the others this one has the fuzz in front of the wah, instead of behind the wah. From the video I found of it, I'm defiantly digging the fuzz and think the component changes gives it a little something different that would be nice as a stand alone fuzz, and the wah has a nice sweep to it as well.

Quick Note: The fuzz should be wired in front of the wah.

Jen Harmon Booster

Not sure what to call this. It has "Booster" written on the original unit, but still i think it's rather closer to an overdrive than a booster. It's definitely not a fuzz. Either way, it does sound pretty nice in the demos. There are other layouts for this circuit around the internets, but i thought i'd be cool to have one that's 1590B friendly. As usual, i've added polarity protection and a filter cap (220µ), to make yours per original, just omit those accordingly. Transistors were BC318C in the original, but i think our closest modern day analogy would be BC549C. Before anyone asks, Input goes to Gain pot's lug number 3.

Jen HF Modulator / Gretsch Playboy

Now get your irons out and build it. Place your favourite fuzz in front of it and get ready for some psychedelic brain melting action. The circuit is the same in both, Jen HF Modulator and Gretsch Playboy. For this layout, i've once again swapped the transistor pinout to match your everyday devices. Original has 2N5172 general amplifier transistors in it, but 2N5088, 2N3904 and many others are very close to those in their specs. If you want to use the original ones, just mind the pinout. I've also added series polarity protection diode and pulldown resistors for in and out to prevent your circuit from popping when switched on and off.

Here's a little dcemo clip of my build:

Jen Fuzz III

Pretty close to the earlier version of Jen Fuzz, and i may have promised not to do Fuzz Faces nor Benders, but here i go again... Seems to be a classic - so some of you might want to clone this one to the specs too.

Jen Fuzz

It seems that not all of the sixties fuzzes were verbatim tonebenders. There's not that much difference blueprintwise, but still noticeable difference. Some might want to clone this too...

Geiri modded his build a bit to get its sound closer to his preferences. Some of you might want to try these mods out as well. Word from Geiri and demo of his modded build:

I basically changed the 10nf cap by the input to a 100nf. The 10nf that goes to level 3 changed to a 47nf and I changed the 1.2nf to a 10nf. Very simple and for me, it improved the pedal a lot. the 2k pot was too big before the change and it would start to make noises but after changing the caps, it's fine. I recommend using a 2k pot if you're gonna do these changes. - When you max the gain, it's still quite bright and more like a distortion but if you switch to neck pickups, it goes a lot fuzzier so I kinda like it!