Fuzz Face clone being all nasty-like

[Arthur Dent]

Hi. I'm having some problems with the first effect I have tried to build, a Fuzz Face clone. It has a few different values for resistors and stuff, but it's basically exactly the NPN-transistor version of the Fuzz Face.
It does distort the signal, and it actually sounds fairly pretty, but for some reason it destroys sustain. It only sends through large signals, which come through loud and fuzzy. Any smaller signal is completely cut out. This unsustain effect seems to effect the high frequencies more than the lows. Does anyone have any idea why this might happen? Any help you could give me would be greatly appreciated.

[Mark Hammer]

Verify the orientation of all electrolytic capcitors. Flipped-around ones can produce sound as you describe.

[Luijo]

Besides what Mark says it could be a bias issue too. Try to bias your transistors to half the supply voltage.

[Arthur Dent]

The electrolytics are correctly oriented. I messed around with the bias, but I can't get it to work right. If the bias resistors are too large, it will either not distort, or have very little farty distortion. If the resistors are too small, it does the whole anti-sustain thing. There really doesn't seem to be any area in between.

[Luijo]

You should try a pot wired as a variable resistor intead of the bias resistors you already have in there, this way you can fine tune the bias to taste. Just don't use a pot too far away from the original value of the bias resistor.
What voltage readings are you getting at CBE of each transistor?