Univox Super Fuzz Modded

[s500]

I know that Shin-ei licensed this circuit out to dozens of manufacturers, including Ibanez, Apollo, Companion, Shaftsbury, Mica, JAX, Kent, Teisco, Marlboro, Royal, and many others and most of them were wired with the jack cut off were as the Univox Superfuzz had a On / Off switch built into the back of the expander pot. When you turn it to off the battery would not drain. I think Univox used the same input jack but it wasn't wired to work because of the expander pot On / Off switch. The others had to have the guitar cord unpluged everytime you were done or the battery would be dead the next time you wanted to use it.

Well I tried it again with the new battery and it still does not have that thick deep bass fuzz tone or Octave ring modulation effect.

The pots are a little scratchy even though I've cleaned them a couple of times. It's possible I could do a better job cleaning them if they were removed from the box. It's hard to imagine they are worn out because the unit has very little use according to the original owner and judging by it's cosmetic condition. They operate smoothly and increases decrease in smooth even increments shown on the meter with no jumping all over the place the way worn pots usually do. Both switches are tight, no jiggling needed.

I'm kind of lost as to what could be wrong. I had one of these pedals back in 68 and I remember they way it sounded and worked. I've done a lot of reading up on these lately and it only confirms what I remember.

[FredB]

Maybe you have a cap or other component failure in or around the differential pair or mid-scoop circuits. I have a ESR meter and could measure the caps if you wanted to send the pedal to me.

Otherwise the best thing I can think of is to probe the signal on board at various places to see where it deviates from what it should be. That's easy enough to do if you have PA head or other amp and some plugs and wire. A signal generator of some sort would be convenient. Although if your industrious you could turn your computer sound card into one again fairly easily with some more plugs and wire.