Particle Vintage Fuzz kit

This was my first stompbox build, although I already have some soldering experience.
I took some additional lessons from the tube and practiced soldering such smaller components on a piece of breadboard. These practice sessions were useful.
Since the kit doesnt come with a more detailed documentation that would be needed by a newbie, I had to gather some resources from the web to be able to identify all of the parts (look up Solder Comic and FuzzDogs Basics Docs for example)
I also ordered an additional Ge transistor EFT83, since Ive read that many pple blew the Ge whilst soldering - and I did that right, because the kit was delivered with a different Ge compared to the recommendation of the Particle Kit documentation by Aion.
In the end I didnt use either of the transistor sockets, but soldered the trannys direct onto the PCB, using croc clips as heatsinks and I didnt blew any of them.
I also replaced the stock red LED and its resistor to one that matches my liking more.
It wasnt obvious at first, but you can separate the footswitch daughterboard from the main PCB, this enables a better fit whilst mounting them.
For easier fitting and fiddling later on, I recommend using around 5cm long wires between the main PCB and FS daughterboard.
It also wasnt quite self-explanatory, but in the stock configuration both pots function as a volume pot on a dual volume pot guitar: if you turn either down completely, you mute the output of the whole pedal.
Also, on my pedal one of the clipping stages paired with the Balance pot drive results is much lower volume, then in the other clipping stage / or with the use of the Harmonics pot on that same clipping stage. One can compensate that for sure with a booster behind the pedal, but maybe theres also another solution that can be built into the pedal itself.
The Alpha pots didnt come with the plastic housings, you might wanna shop them separately.

The fuzz tones are nice, I like all variations (for comparison, I currently use: Carcosa, Mad Mule, Super Fuzz SF-300 and those fuzzes that come with my HR Gigboard).
It cleans up nicely with the guitar volume pot.
It can also be used as a nice overdrive/booster, with slight compression, but still dynamic.

I ordered the pre-drilled 125B case together with the kit as well. The quality of the case is mediocre. Id have to do a lot of surface puttying to make the imperfections of the case surface disappear, also my case had a huge, deep scar on the faceplate right across the whole for the clipping switch, I guess this was made when the wholes were drilled. This would also take a lot of putty to level out... So dont expect yours to be a boutique quality case without additional manual work.
The three connectors on the top of the housing are a tight fit on the inside with the supplied 6.5mm jacks, as you cant orientate them fully to your likings. Be prepared to use some heat shrink tubes, to prevent contact to the Alpha pot housings/case sidewalls/case bottom plate.

Szabolcs A., 20.02.2023