Z VEX | 7 years ago
The transistor was in invented in late 1947 at Bell Labs, and, driven by the military and rabid consumers of portable transistor radios, quickly displaced vacuum tubes in portable electronics. For the first time, music lovers could carry a device in their shirt pockets that would play for hours on a single battery. I remember seeing my first pocket solid-state radio, a generous gift from my dad’s business friend to me as a little kid, probably because he saw my fascination with electronics. It had twelve germanium transistors in it, and that was in the mid 60s, well after the advent of 1960 silicon transistor manufacturing. Maybe germaniums were cheaper? Germanium transistors certainly dominated music electronics throughout the sixties and into the 70s, yet two things can be said about silicon bipolar transistors with all certainty. One, making NPN versions of silicon transistors is and was much easier than making germanium NPNs. You can hardly find any germanium NPNs from the 50s and 60s, but silicon NPNs are plentiful (and work well in negative ground pedals). Two, silicon transistors have much better temperature stability than germanium ones, gain-wise. That means that the gain and sound remains about the same whether they’re hot or cold. Germanium transistors’ gains fluctuate wildly with temperature and that can really make their sound suffer in the sun or under hot lights, or in snow or intense air conditioning. At any rate, it’s interesting to note that classic Fuzz Face type pedals use two PNP germanium devices (positive ground) or in later years two NPN silicon (negative ground). Aside from limited edition reverse Fuzz Factory pedals, we’ve always used one silicon NPN preamp transistor and two germanium PNP fuzz transistors, up till now. Welcome to the all-silicon Fuzz Factory. A giant step into the future. Of the past. Edgier than ever. Stable (or predictably unstable) as hell.
