BC109B Transistors (for wah pedals)

Where can I find these? Supposedly Mouser has them but when I search on it, I get: 526-NTE123A NTE123A

Is that a functional equivalent?

comps but I don't believe those make any difference in tone until you get way above human hearing. They are also noisier and they drift more...<< in my Fuzz Face out and substitute the more common carbon film. <

The noise generated by a transistor (especially the ones used in fuzz and wah pedals) is many times greater in magnitude than any possible resistor noise, unless the resistor has failed. So don't think you will be able to hear, or even measure with a fine instrument, any noise improvement in a guitar pedal like a wah or fuzz, by changing the resistor types.

As my old boss would say, "it's like pissing in the ocean".

(I still wont drink seawater though!)

I finally got my BC109B transistors and installed them in my GCB-95 franken-wah, replacing the 5117 ones that were in there. It makes a big difference. Much more bottom end. In fact, I had to bump up (down) the .01uf cap in series with the Q2 emitter to a .005 in order to get more treble. It sounds really good though being a lower gain transistor there's not quite as much quack as there was before. With the 5117 there was a lot of quack but the wah had a very narrow range...Next step is to replace the inductor

Oh man...I thought I had it right according to the diagrams I had but I put it in one way and when that didn't work, took a second transistor (assumed the first one was fried) and just reversed it. If the B is on the end, that would certainly explain it. How do you handle puting an ECB transistor in an
EBC hole without shorting them, short of insulating each leg on the parts side of the board? Do you really think the 5771 transistor in there is an
ECB pin order? I'll check the circuit though...

Dunlop has a new pedal out now which uses one of the reissue inductors and it's supposed to be similar in tone to the vox 848 reissue...

I played the vox in the store for a few minutes and thought it sounded pretty good but I'd need to spend more than 5 minutes with it...

I understand that but a given transformer and it's substitutes should (in theory) be biased with the same values as the original. In any event, the circuit is designed for BC109B transistors as far as I can tell so substituting any BC109B type transistor ought to work fine.
Others are using those to good effect...

Knew that was coming!

Check your install. It will work. What did you install it in? Some Crybabys have the transistors ECB and newer ones are EBC.

Haha - That's funny. And of the reissue inductors, the yellow one is the vintage one and the red one is the torroidal one with a more linear freq response (supposedly). Maybe they got it backwards on their site?!? I bought a yellow one and didn't like the tone at all. The quack was there but the tone had a weird envelope to it in the "non-quack" portion of the wah-pot's travel...

Hmm - Maybe mine was bad. I have another on order along with a red one...We'll see...

You should be able to get the schematic from one of these sites. There are a ton of variations of the GCB-95. If you have a newer one, it has a buffer in it. The buffer is cool but if you want the original wah sound, you'll have to remove the buffer. There are explanations for doing that on several of these sites. Let me know of you find something else cool. Apparently Gil
Ayan was posting some stuff about wah mods and had a page up about it but I couldn't find it...

Here's some miscellaneous wah links:

Let me know if you find anything else cool. I've got my GCB-95 sounding really great but would like to get closer to the italian wah sound...
http://www.generalguitargadgets.com/wahwah.html
http://fuzzcentral.tripod.com/mckoy.html http://members01.chello.se/pastorn/fx/mods/dunlop.htm
http://www.green-fuz.freeserve.co.uk/wah.html http://www.wah-wah.co.uk/
http://home.cfl.rr.com/dbhammond/doug.htm

NTE is a company that makes equivalent semiconductors for many of the common ones that are no longer available from the original manufacturer. I've used
NTE replacement parts on many things in the past and normally with good results. I have my NTE cross reference at work but an NTE123A is a fairly common replacement transistor.

Shhhhh I'm still buying up the Thomas Organs for peanuts. They can have all the chrome ones.

I understand.Go for it..have fun..




But I'm trying to learn how to do it myself. I don't want to just get the end result.

Is the 2n222a about the same gain?

I don't have the box in front of me but I could swear the box I saw at Guitar
Center said is was the original circuit. I knew Dunlop made it for them.
Regardless of what it says on the box or website, it's a Crybaby with a Fasel.
I haven't had a chance to check the values they used in it but it sure ain't worth $50 - 75 more than a Crybaby.

It's a 2N2222A and yes,the gain is the same. I use those in the wahs I mod all the time.

My idiocy. The 5117 transistor was ECB not, EBC like the NTE....

Dumb, dumb and dumber...Must be the neurontin...

Vox doesn't say"Original Circuit"That is bullshit. Vox says-- The original 1960s VOX Clyde McCoy Wah-Wah pedal became one of the most sought after vintage effects by collectors worldwide. Now we are re-issuing this legendary effect with some modern enhancements.
The Clyde McCoy Wah-Wah pedal includes details like a custom-tuned inductor made by the original manufacturer and a true bypass switch.
Plus, it has some new enhancements like an AC adapter jack and a newly designed, custom taper poten-tiometer. The McCoy Wah-Wah sports a modified but classic look, with a gray hammertone finish on the lower half and a sketch of Clyde McCoy on the bottom, just like on the original.
Copyright =A9 2002 - 2003

Do you know who made the clyde v-848?
Dunlop..Who made the v847?Dunlop..Who made the vox 846?Same people that made the Crybaby..Who made the italian Vox wahs?Same people that made the italian Crybaby...It is a small world.

I still say G. Teese is the man for the vintage/modern wah sounds.He does mods to his own pedals to suit his customers as well..Great
Guy,full of info,and highly respected and copied to a degree..Which explains the now epoxyed boards...You can bet Teese canget a hold of any production wah,plug it in an amp and know what and how they got the sound in a heart beat..He is that good..If I wanted to learn a Zep song
I wuld like to learn it from Page.If I want to know how to get one of my wahs to do something I go to Teese..It is just that simple..He paved the road for others to follow..he doesn't claim to know everything about every wah,But as any wise man will tell you "You can't learn anything if you act like and feel you already know everything"..Keith

The NTE123A will work fine. The 2N2222A will work too and they cost less.

Jerry,You are probably right about the crybaby.I don't know.. All my v-846 wahs that bring big bucks are identical to the crybaby wahs that brings half..HA!!!
Maybe the chrome top is the secret to the tone..LOL!!!..Keith

Just an update...The NTE123A does not appear to work in this circuit...

The point was that you would hear the noise in carbon comp resistors easier than you'd hear the difference in tone within guitar frequencies...