Fuzz pedal picks up radio stations better than a radio

[Tadpui]

I can't remember if I ranted about this back in February or March when I first noticed it. But I've got a DIY fuzz pedal from RetroTone that I built a few years ago. This is a different RetroTone fuzz pedal than I used for the drum machine challenge (that was a Scrambler, this is a Super Fuzz). I enjoyed it for a bit, then shelved it for a long time.

Last spring, after a month or so of lamenting the then-new pandemic and lockdown, I decided to pull out the Super Fuzz clone and get lost in my own world for a while. As soon as I stepped on the switch to turn the pedal on, a local radio station started playing through it. Of course, it was a news station covering the (again: then-new) pandemic sweeping the world. It was one of the most defeating moments of this whole damned pandemic. It was officially inescapable.

Today I pulled out the pedal again and fed it into the clean channel of my Mesa Lonestar Special. Goodness gracious, it is glorious. It's everything I want in a fuzz. But I'll be damned, the radio station is still coming through loud and clear. Actually it's TWO radio stations now. The funny thing is that when I crank up the 2nd knob (it's a bare metal chassis so I don't know what the control is called...it's basically an EQ from what I can tell) the radio station goes away. But it still has a nasty hum, even when Radio Espanol and the Morning Zoo goes away.

So I guess my question is: what element of the innards of this pedal would be acting as such a sensitive radio receiver and hum generator? Any ideas of what I could modify inside it to filter it a bit better? It's my only pedal that picks up radio stations. Actually that's not true...the Scrambler clone did it too, until I pressed down on one of the knobs and it stopped. I honestly don't know what the hell would be changed by pressure on a knob but...I tried the same trick on the Super Fuzz with no luck.

I found this schematic for a different clone of the Super Fuzz, but I really have no idea if this is representative of the RetroTone interpretation of this circuit: http://generalguitargadgets.com/pdf/ggg ... uzz_sc.pdf

[Armistice]

AM or FM?

[Tadpui]

AM or FM?

That's actually a good question. I thought they were FM stations, but now I'm not sure. Given the "all talk, no music" nature of them, I'm tempted to say AM now that I think about it. I'll have to sweep around on an actual radio and see if I can find them and their frequencies.

I've drooled on myself while staring at the schematic and I just don't know where I can filter it.

[Tadpui]

I did stumble across this thread from a guy having a similar problem. Same family of fuzz type as well. There are some good suggestions in there from one of the responders, so I might look further into these to see if I'm brave enough to try any of this.

I guess first I'll try it with a battery and see what happens. I highly doubt that the signal is coming from AC since I'm using a Pedal Power 2+, but anything is possible.

https://www.tdpri.com/threads/i-need-he ... ce.420285/

[Greg_L]

I did stumble across this thread from a guy having a similar problem. Same family of fuzz type as well. There are some good suggestions in there from one of the responders, so I might look further into these to see if I'm brave enough to try any of this.

I guess first I'll try it with a battery and see what happens. I highly doubt that the signal is coming from AC since I'm using a Pedal Power 2+, but anything is possible.

https://www.tdpri.com/threads/i-need-he ... ce.420285/

The small capacitor to ground on the input is usually what works with guitar amps that do this.

[vomitHatSteve]

Did you try swapping out cables? Shorter runs should mean less wire to act as an antenna, right?

[Tadpui]

Did you try swapping out cables? Shorter runs should mean less wire to act as an antenna, right?

I'll give that a try tonight. I'm a little stubborn in believing that the guitar or cables are at fault, just because other fuzz pedals that are also adding massive amounts of gain aren't reproducing the problem. But I guess that the copper in the cable is about the only thing in the setup that would act as a perfect antenna, and its a cheap Monoprice cable at that. So I'll put that on my list of things to try tonight.

[vomitHatSteve]

Oh yeah, I definitely wouldn't blame the cables, but they migh exacerbate an existing problem