Don't stomp me now - The Mojo Stomp porch box

The Mojo Stomp

Somewhat off the main path or my FuzzQuest, here's something a bit different. The never ending quest for a perfect fuzz tone is not my only goal in terms of tone and guitar sound. Another fetish of mine is Blues, and by Blues I mean hard, painful and soulful Blues with its roots somewhere around Mississippi delta. I love both acoustic and electric blues and as much harmonica as possible with a lot of howlin'. From Mississippi Fred McDowell, Blind Lemon Jefferson to Howlin' Wolf, Little Walter, John Lee Hooker and Muddy Waters. Even the "new" guys like Charlie Musselwhite, R.L. Burnside and Junior Kimbrough are fantastic and deliver super guts-out blues. When I play solo guitar with harmonica and I wail my soul out I always find myself stomping my foot hard against the floor, and most often I pray it was a wooden porch floor. Most of the time it's not.

So, I started searching the web for every possible porch-box-stomp-box solution and came up with a huge amount of material to work with. A lot of people around the word will sell you a wooden box with a Piezo transducer and some jiggling metals inside to get a nice foot stomping sound. Some of the nicest sounds I've hear, however, came from boxes where a small speaker was placed as the transducer to pickup the mechanical vibrations of the stomp.

I found a really nice 2-way Sony speaker and a good wooden box (old optical equipment was traditionally sold in very good wooden boxes). The woofer had a good low bottom while the twitter had nice punch, so I decided to use both of them placing the two speakers in the box. I cut a big hole so the the box would close and the Alnico magnet of the woofer would stick out of the box and I covered it with some more wood and rubber. I hooked up the two speakers in parallel and took the two lines and connected them to a mono Neutrik 1/4" input jack and that was it.

The Mojo Stomp - gut shot - two speakers, one jack, one box

There are so many ways you can use this box. playing with your foot or hands, stomping, tapping or knocking. Different areas on the board give you various tones, closer to the woofer you get more bass, closer to the twitter you get more treble and edge. All this makes this box a nice electro-acoustic bass drum. The added value here comes from the fact that you can turn the box upside down and get even more tonal options because now you're hitting the speaker membranes from the opposite side. One last gimmick is the tilted position of the box due to the magnet's size, sticking out of the box. This means you can put your foot on the pedal and do a "wah-wah" kind of movement and get two bass-snare sounds, one from your heel knocking the bottom end against the floor and one from your foot tapping the upper side of the box.

Very dynamic and playable !

The Mojo Stomp - the tilted position

To anyone who's interested in these kinds of boxes I strongly suggest - Build your own. It's too dams simple and there are too many boxes out there that will be just OK and not exactly what you are after. As always, it's your quest to get your sound!

Some well respected stompbox manufacturers are Mojohound, Pratley, Ellis, musiXtools, TinoStomp and Peterman.

Stomp away and howl....if you want audio or video clips, just comment and I'll abide.

Driving Down Da Bass

The Caribass - ROG Flipster

This time we are off and away from the world of guitar and into the bass we dive deep.

Runoffgroove's (ROG) Flipster was designed to emulate the tone and drive of the famous Ampeg Portaflex SB-12 bass amp. This amp was the little brother in a series of tube amps designed in the mid 60's. The amp had a 12'' Jenson speaker cabinet and was probably used on many recordings from 1965 and on through the 70's. Mo-Town Bass sound was known for using Ampeg bass amps.

I don't know too much about bass amps but I do know that I like Ampeg bass amps. They are smooth and have a lot of bottom as well as edge. I particularly love controlling the character of a song using bass, whether it's deep dub style lo-pass or grungy-rock overdriven tone. When I play bass I sometimes like to switch quickly between styles and all that flexibility means I need a good pedal, capable of drive range from clean to hard drive with some equalizing options.

A 1965 Portaflex SB-12

Assuming ROG designs are always good, especially for emulating tube amps, and this one had 2 12AX7, 2 7868 and 1 5AR4 tubes. I built it and tried various FETs to get the gain I wanted. Funny thing, I made a nice error hooking up the the TONE knobs and got 2 modes for the tone-stack. ROCK mode for a more edgy-punchy curve and a DUB mode with less treble and more lows.

I played with the pedal on more than a few occasions and I still use it more for live than in the studio. It gives you the ability to drive your bass without touching the amp and it's not like an overdrive pedal which cuts the lows. You can maintain your lows and still bark and bite. For really hard bass distortion there is nothing better then the Pro-co Rat or any version of it like my Bat shown here on a previous post.

There is a new Portaflex SB-12 version now called "Ginger" which is supposed to be better. I think I know what they are talking about, The Flipster was good, but not so much as an emulation of the Ampeg amp. I did have problems getting low gain clean tones with the Flipster but it was good for what I needed.

Because I got an interesting paint job on the wooden enclosure which had some Carribean touch to it I decided to call the pedal Caribass. With my Music-Man Sting Ray replica bass I can get some great tones with almost any style.

I am definitely getting ready to upgrade the Flipster to the Ginger. Stay tuned as it is right around the corner.

If you want gut shots or audio clips just comment and I'll add them. As always, schematic is available here. More info from Runoffgroove can be found here.

 

Bending your Tone for Page

The Led Bender mkII

The UK fuzz mania began in 1965 probably after the Rolling Stones recorded the 3 fuzz notes that changed the history of rock'n roll: the opening notes for their hit "Satisfaction". First recorded on Brian Jones' Harmonica in Chicago and 2 days later by Richards using a Maestro Fuzz Tone, the opening notes were meant to be replaced with a horn section later on, but luckily producer Andrew Oldham decided to keep it as it was. The song was an immediate hit across both sides of the Atlantic and fuzz was the talk of the day. Guitar legend Vic Flick, the man begind the James Bond Theme, brought the American Fuzz-tone (FZ-1) to the UK and asked electronics engineer Gary Stewart Hurst if he could modify the unit to increase the tone sustain. Hurst used a similar 3 transistors architecture and designed the first Tone Bender, referred today as the mkI. Within a year or so a plethora of fuzz pedals were issued by various brands like the Arbiter Fuzz Face and the Baldwin Burns Buzzaround. While the Fuzz Face became the most famous fuzz of them all, the Tone Bender was probably the highest selling unit ever due to the fact that it was issued under various brands like Sola Sound, Vox, Rotosound and Marshall. The MKI version was made famous by the Beatles (Rubber Soul), Mick Ronson (Ziggy's Spiders from Mars), Pete Townsend and Jeff Beck.

Jimmy Pages' Bender original receipt (left) and the Sola Sound reissue of the mkII (right)

Despite its legendary sound, the Tone Bender mkI's sound and design was not flawless. Circuit was sensitive to gain tolerances of the transistors and the sound was buzzier than some wanted. A new 2 transistor design was issued by Sola Sound and is referred to as mk1.5. This design could probably be the original 2 transistor design which Arbiter issued during 1966 as the Fuzz Face. The circuit was more stable, the sound was richer and saturation was not too heavy. The huge success of the Fuzz Face drove the competition further and Sola Sound made the leap to a 3 transistor architecture but this time it was a first amplification stage driving a Fuzz Face style 2 tranny stage with Germanium OC75 or OC81D were used on all 3. Different brands featured similar mkII design using various transistors, and they all were successful throughout the late 60's and 70's. When referring to legends like Jimmy Page and his tone on the Led Zeppelin I and II albums from 1969 the Tone Bender mkII is considered to be a major factor.

The Led Bender mkII

Even more variant and diverse than the Tone Bender mkII of the Fuzz Faces is the Tone Bender mkIII which was issued 1968 and sparked a whole different era of fuzz pedals which led to the birth of the Big Muff.

After building more then a few fuzz pedals I decided to get into the Tone Bender jungle. I realized that I really wanted the mkI and the mkII, but the mkI seemed tricky and risky so I took the mkII path. Now Germanium trannys are always expensive and I found some silicon versions which got good reviews so I decided to give it a go.

After many unsuccessful attempts on various schematics I found one which worked, sounded good and by replacing trannys I really managed to get that bendery tone I was aiming for: Raw, punchy and versatile. Once you go for the Whole Lotta Love riff with humbuckers or How Many More Times with a Tele, you'll know this is the one.

I started with the GGG NPN design modded by J. Orman and B. Trembley which is a good choice. You can find the schematic here, but I really wanted to have the extra Tone control so I went the Hot Silicon path  designed by Gus Smalley. The schematic is shown here. The two designs are quite alike and sound more or less the same depending on the transistors used. I took Mictester's and JD Sleep's advise of putting low gain sets and went to buy the 2N2369 parts instead of BC109C or 2N5088. I ended up using 2N2369 for Q1, 2N3904 for Q2, BC109C for Q3 and 2N2369 for Q4 for the TONE stage. I also liked the FAT switch which switches between low and high values of the input cap. Once I got that Jimmy Page sound I called it a day and painted the new Led Bender in a Zeppelin homage style.

Gut shot of the Led Bender. VR1 is a pot on the right side.
Might as well change it to a  board resistor.

I am sure this is not the end of my Tone Bender phase but it sure sounds great, I am getting a friend to lend me his Sola Sound reissue of the mkII professional and I'll compare the two. Meanwhile I play Good Times Bad Times using this little baby connected to the Runoffgroove Supro amp emulation pedal and with the right  reverb I can nail that super tone. A major milestone in my Fuzz quest.

The Flying Rat

The 60's and early 70's were all about driving tube amps into overdrive heaven and on the way use fuzz and treble boosters to get the job done. Most Fuzz stompboxes were, in fact, so effective that you didn't really need the amps to be that heavily driven anymore, but they killed most of the guitar's tone and dynamics. They took over the sound (Fuzz faces and Big Muffs to name a few). 

As people got fed up with fuzzes and wanted back that dynamic distorted overdrive, Orange amde the first step and came out with their Overdrive amp in the mid 70's. That started the distortion race all over again. The idea of a stompbox giving you that distortion, which was so important for rock guitarists, yielded the next step in the second half of the 70's. In 1976 Amlyn Crowther designed the Hotcake which would become the first boutique overdrive (Sonic Youth, Pavement, Radiohead, Protishead and many other consider it their "secret weapon'). Japanese based Ibanez and Boss came out with the classic Tube Screamer and the OD-1 (DS-1 too), respectively, around 1978. In Kalamazoo, Michigan, two guys in a basement started selling custom ordered pedals under the Pro-Co name. Those were the first Rats. All the above brands produced pedals based around an operational amplifier and have some similarities in their designs. All three became classics and over the years got reissues, sequels and modified versions. 

I decided to build the Rat for 3 main reasons: a) It is a classic pedal and deserves FuzzQuest attention. b) Some of my favorite guitarists use it or have used it over the years. C) There is no real mojo in this circuit. the LM308 chip and clipping diodes are all pretty straightforward. No Germanium PNP or de-gooped old boxes with debates over them. The amount of schematics on the web is infinite and the mods are all given out. You can build the circuit with mods and it will sound just like the real thing. Even better. Guitarists who used this unit and made it famous were Thom Yorke, Thurston Moore, Stephen Malkmus, Bernard Butler, Marc Ribot, Bill Frisell, Frank Black, Jeff Beck, Andy Summers, Graham Coxon and Kurt Cobain, to name a few. If you told me only Thurston and Ribot were on this list, it would have been enough for me. This might have been the overdrive/distortion used by Ribot on Rain Dogs by Tom Waits. Imagine that!

The Multi Rat Schematic

So, I gathered about a dozen schematics I considered to be trustworthy. RG Keen and Jack Orman did some tremendous work given on the aron nelson archive and diystompboxes. You can download the schematic shown here, but Beavisaudio, GGG, Sabrotone, SoulSonic, Gaussmarkov and others, all have verified circuits readily available, just click the links.

I added the Ruetz mod to conttroll the highs and called it EDGE. Got an On/Off/On switch for choosing between the diodes, MOSFET clipping and clean boost and named it CHARACTER. DISTORTION  FILTER and VOLUME are similar to the original. Apart from that it's a vintage Rat clone.  The added mods give it a lot of "elevation" so I called it the BAT. Also I liked the Mokafix Bat VST emulation and adopted the name. It really is a mouse with wings.

So I got the circuit working and painted the enclosure. I really dig the sound which sounds pretty awesome especially with my English Channel emulation of the AC30. I completely understand why this became a classic unit. This is the distortion we grew up on listening to grunge, alternative and punk rock from the 80's and 90's. Great sound, versatile, easy to use. Humbuckers with an AC30 you get the British indie rock of Suede and Blur. Single Coils with Fender amps will give you Sonic Youth and Pavement flavors. Pretty Amazing. With the clean boost mod you can get great fuzzy overdrive and you can drive other pedals on the chain or drive your amp further. Super!  

As always, if you want audio demos you have to comment and ask for it. I hope to get some clips done for all my posts but it's gonna take a while since I am on a building mania and even posting on the FuzzQuest blog takes me forever.

Anyway, a very recommended build. Pretty easy and fun with a lot of options. With the Ruetz mod attenuating the highs and the clean Boost which is not so clean I got some wicked fuzz sounds. If you are wondering, you can be sure that a Tube Screamer clone is on the way. Naturally.

   

The Pink Face

The Pink Face

Throughout the history of fuzz pedals, fuzz guitarists and psychedelic fuzzy solos, there is no fuzz which has received greater attention than the legendary Fuzz Face. Originally produced by Arbiter Electronics in England and appeared during 1966 the unit was an immediate success. Many of the greatest guitarists in rock history played their best solos and riffs through a Fuzz Face including Hendrix, Gilmour, Blackmore, Harrison, Townsend and many more. Nevertheless, the dependency of the Germanium transistors on temperature resulted in a lack of tone consistency and many players suffered on stage from this effect. To circumvent this issue Dallas Arbiter started issuing Silicon versions of the FF somewhere around 1969 replacing the NKT275 trannies with BC108. Silicon was the new hype at the time and it seemed that by 1970-71 everybody was switching to Silicon faces. Hendrix's Band of Gypsys, Gilmour on all PF albums and tours since 1971 including all of the solos on Meddle and Dark side of the Moon are probably the most documented examples. One of my favorite guitarists Michael Karoli (Can) also used Silicon Fuzz Faces to create his raw and untamed distortion throughout the history of Can, so this was enough to get me going. 

Both designs are pretty close with the Germs being mostly PNP and the Silis being NPN. Comparing the sound of the Germanium units with the Silicon ones it is often said that while the Germs sound raspy, warm and sweet, the Silicons are brighter, edgy and have more gain. Well....from my builds....this statement is....TRUE!

The original 1966 Arbiter Face - Germanium

On my Fuzz quest I really couldn't imagine the journey without understanding the differences between the two FF versions and there was no other way than building the two. After I finished the Germanium Fulltone version I started to drown with info on the Silicon versions: Fulltone, Analog Man, Dunlop, Runoffgroove, GGG you name it. I looked through dozens of schematics and breadboarded some of them. I even looked at the German Schaller Fuzz (FF variant) after reading that Michael Karoli (CAN) used one. Actually, the first fuzz I ever built was the Runoffgroove SiliFace II and I loved it for some months. That was what got me interested in fuzz pedals in the first place, My Fuzz quest started because one fuzz was not enough to get the range of buzz tones I was after.

The 1970 Dallas Arbiter Fuzz Face - Silicon

Due to the fact that the Fuzz Face design is tolerant to part values many versions have been issued over the years and the amount of Fuzz Face versions became quite vast (just like it happened with the Big Muffs or the Tube Screamers). The design is so simple that small part changes resulted in some sonical change. After all the entire unit incorporates 4 resistors, 3 caps, 2 transistors, 2 pots and 1 switch. That's it!

4 resistors, 3 capacitors, 2 transistors, 2 potentiometers

The sound I was aiming for was that of Gilmour playing the Time solo on the album version of the Dark Side. I started out with the GGG early 70's Boutique NPN Fuzz Face after my success with the GGG 60's version. I liked the PRE GAIN knob and the circuit seemed pretty good, but something was missing. I didn't box the circuit and it stayed on the shelf for some time. I built a few other Fuzz pedals and when I thought I understood more about what I wanted I revisited the circuit. This time I modified the circuit based on the Axis Face version by Phillip Bryant modified by Brett Robinson. 

Gilmour's early 70's rig

I did a lot of testing using Hi-Watt amp emulations, tweaked many of the parts in this little circuit, changed trannies and used several guitars. Surprisingly, I ended up using 2N2369 (hfe=70-90) for Q1 and BC109 for Q2 (hfe=200). The BC108C I had (hfe around 400-550) seemed to be too pumped up for my taste. I settled on a 50kA pot for the PRE GAIN and a 100kA for the VOLUME. 220n cap for the input and 30p cap on the bridge for lo-pass filtering. I replaced the CONTOUR pot with a 470R resistor and kept the 22uF Fuzz cap. I kept the reverse polarity protection and cut off the strange feedback diode bridge which didn't seem to affect the sound. Biasing Q2 I got 4.5V with resistance being about 3k3 so that's about 4k3 total Q2 bias. It's funny that this fuzz is currently my most tweaked fuzz circuit to date. Only a few parts but so much experimentation. Other fuzz circuits you get the schematic, the parts, breadboard and maybe test a few transistors, bias them and that's it. Along with the early Tone Benders and the Maestro Fuzz Tone which are more complex it's one of the toughest, considering its architecture.

Luckily, somebody at work who knows I am always on the lookout for metallic enclosures, gave me this great candy box. I couldn't have asked for a better design with those pink pigs on a round enclosure making it suitable for a Fuzz Face and for a Pink Floyd related sound, so I jigsawed it to the right height, called it Pink Face, mixed my glass paint bottles and came up with a magical pinkish tone... Perfect!

The sound is well worth the effort. It's not as warm or sweet as the Germanium version but it does give you the Time solo style. Bright when the FUZZ pot reaches max. The PRE-GAIN gets you that rolled off effect for cool rhythm chords and sparkly clean chops. Using a treble booster in front enables you to get great tones with the FUZZ knob below max. I also tested it with a Wah in front and no buffer was needed. Definitely a must build on my fuzz journey towards a better future.

If you want to learn more about the the topology of the fuzz face there is no better place than R.G. Keen's article: The Technology of the Fuzz Face. It helped me a lot in choosing the right part values and testing transistors both in my Germanium unit and this recent Silicon unit. It is really the Fuzz Face Bible, highly recommended and insightful. 

The schematic I drew up in Chrome Circuit Lab is shown here for reference but feel free to use it, tweak it or twist it. I will update it if I decide to change it. The feedback diode did not really do anything so I left it as in the Fulltone version.

Hope you get to enjoy it! You can also have a blast using Mark's vero layout on Tagboardeffects.blogspot,com

There is a lot of Fuzz Face info all over the web, here are some more recommended pages for extended reading on this matter:

• http://effectslounge.com/blog/more-history-fuzz-dallas-arbiter-fuzz-face
• http://www.custom-sounds.com/Articles/FUZZ-FACE-by-David-Morin, 
• http://fuzzcentral.ssguitar.com/fuzzface.php.
• http://www.analogman.com/fuzzface.htm
• http://www.gilmourish.com/?page_id=73

Tumble and Drive - the Rougue Dumble

The Runoffgroove Tumble Drive (Umble)

For those of you who are following this blog and my recent posts, it is probably clear that, although our main point of concern is the magical sounds of fuzz circuits, a great of interest is being paid to the accompanying peripherals, which have a great deal to do with the overall guitar sound. What I mean by this long phrase is that every time I think I have understood the fuzz sound of a certain pedal I am amazed to discover how different it sounds and behaves when you play with it through different amps.

That was the main reason I began building amp emulation pedals like the English Channel (emulation a VOX AC30 top boost channel) or the Thor (The Marshall 100W Superlead). You have probably noticed that when it comes to amp emulation I am very fond of the Runoffgroove design, and that is mostly because they just sound great and they definitely evoke the characteristic sounds of the amps they aim to emulate.

On of the most sought after sound of guitar amplifiers is the unique sound of the Dumble amps which have been made since the 60's in California by Alexander "Howard" Dumble. Although I have never played through a Dumble in my life, nor do I believe I will ever do, it was interesting to hear what the fuss was all about. The list of Dumble users includes some major players like Santana, SRV, John Mayer, Al Di Meola and Ben Harper and many more. Probably the most recognized user of the Dumbles is Eric Johnson who made the amps famous with his singing Fuzz Face going through an heavily overdriven Dumble.

Unlike many of the ROG designs which I built in order to get the well known classic sound of a certain amp, on this build I just wanted a good American  sound which would get me from clean to crunch with some nice lead tone and good tone control. I even asked the ROG guys about a Fender like design that would get me close to a Vibroking or a Super-Sonic sound and they recommended their Dumble-like design, called the Umble, a cascaded FET based overdrive. 

I quickly started gathering parts and had the circuit running in a few days....and YES....another great sounding overdrive by the amazing guys at ROG. This is a very versatile unit which got me playing for days getting some wicked tones. On the lower end of the DRIVE knob it's capable of some really sweet clean tones. Single coils come cleaner but with proper use of the tonestack you can get Humbuckers to sound clean too. I really love low gain pedals because I love the warm drive you can get from them. This pedal does it all, warm, punchy or razor sharp, it's all there. Once you get the DRIVE up it becomes a monster and reaches Fuzz territory towards the end. While lowering the Tone stack knobs cleans the sound, increasing them gives you more drive and half way through the dials you are already speeding on the freeway.

I called it Tumble Drive because it sounded better then Umble to me and it drives so smooth and nice.

The one thing which I really love about this design is that it also serves as an excellent booster before a second overdrive like the Supreaux Duo ("1st Page" on my blog). It sounds really good and gives you the Eric Johnson tone if you put a Fuzz Face in front of it. Actually, every fuzz I hooked up with it sounded great and so it isn't just another amp-like pedal. Although the Tone stack is a little strange to work with it sounds good: The TREBLE knob adds some BASS as you crank it, and the BASS is quite subtle.

The final thing I did just recently was adding a simple switch to bypass the first FET gain stage so that I can now get even cleaner sound on low DRIVE settings. Now it's just perfect and I really like the paint job which I got in the end with the IGNITE toggle switch.

The gain switch which bypasses the first stage gain FET (in red)

Umble with Gain switch

Again....don't pass out on this design if you are serious about american sounding overdrives. The schematic can be found here.

Below are 2 demos of my lousy playing on my ES335 clone guitar and the pedal through a soundcard and some amp with room simulations. The first is a demo with different settings and the second is a mix of 3 tracks, Riff+rhythm+solo, with various settings showing the versatile sound of the effect on a single guitar. It's quite an amazing pedal with its capabilities as a low gain overdrive, high gain overdrive, full on distortion and a great fuzz character with the BASS knob fully cranked. The tone stack have a huge effect on the sound of the pedal.

Tumble Drive - Umble on Mixcloud

Shake, Rattle and Roll - The Runoffgroove Tri-Vibe vibrato/phaser/leslie pedal

As I have stated on some previous posts, getting the best fuzz sound or for that matter getting the best sound from any guitar involves more than a few parameters: Picking style, pickups, pedals, amps, mic placement etc. All this is nice and all but sometimes there are more effects involved which really transforms the sound into something else, richer, more psychedelic, more dynamic and new. I am talking about the use of filters, reverbs, phasers, vibrato, tremolo, delay and chorus effects. The first effect I built which was not a distortion pedal was a PAiA Voltage Controlled Filter. Combining the filter with a delay pedal proved to be a super exotic source of psychedelic sounds. I knew I would some day get deeper into modulation effects. As those effects are usually tougher to build I was always intimidated to start one out.

The Swirly Vibes vibrato/phaser/leslie pedal

When I started to get deeper into the Hendrix sound I found the Univibe pedal to be something of a mysterious part of his sound. It is used heavily on Band of Gypsys - Machine Gun, and on Izabella. Later I found out that Gilmour actually used a modified version of the Univibe as the phaser on the opening track Breathe on The Dark Side album (The phaser on the Shine On riff from Wish You was an actual MXR Phase 90). The Uni-vibe was first introduced somewhere in the 60's by Shin-Ei and Vox and was intended to be used as a Leslie simulation. When ROG came out with the Tri-Vibe: a simple enough design aiming to get that sound, I thought it was a good way to get into the business. Even more interesting was the design allowing to combine two modulations together, namely pitch vibrato and phase modulation to get the rotary speaker (Leslie) effect, hence, the Tri-Vibe. I always had a soft spot for Leslie cabinets used in Hammond organs but also on Pianos (Don't Pass Me By - the Beatles), electric guitars (as used by Jethro Tull on Benefit - Guitars, vocals and flutes) and even vocals (John Lennon on Tomorrow Never Knows).

A great page for some info about the Leslie cabinet can be found on:
http://www.theatreorgans.com/hammond/faq/mystery/mystery.html

The ROG design looked very clever and interesting so I built it and stuck it in a modified tin chocolate box. After a few gigs I realized that I needed a stronger enclosure so I reboxed in a regular 1590BB Hammond style box.

ROG Tri-Vibe new enclosure

The circuit has two self explanatory knobs for INTENSITY/DEPH and RATE, and a three position switch to get the SHAKE (vibrato) in the center position, RATTLE (phaser) and ROLL (rotary speaker). I love the rate knob which gives you a wide frequency range from about 0.2 Hz up to 7 Hz or so, that's a few seconds a round to a few rounds a second. Both vibrato and phaser are smooth and gentle and sound pretty damn good. Only drawback of the VIBE effect is that is is really mild and you can really feel it on the high RATE settings. I really wish it was more pronounced. The PHASER swirl effect is milder than the Phase 90 by MXR and it is actually very close to the EHX SMALL STONE which I really like. The Leslie-like whirly effect which is a combination of the VIBE and SWIRL is very good in itself but it only reminds me of the Leslie effect and it, obviously, doesn't have the crunch which accompanies a real Leslie. You can add the extra crunch yourself and get much closer to an actual Leslie sound. Using a fuzz (or better yet the High Tyme Axis/Octavia Fuzz) before the Tri-Vibe on Bass or guitar yielded such a dynamic and rich tone that made me sit one evening playing a single riff over and over dosing off on the guitar. Even the minimum settings on both knobs gives a nice useful hi-pass filtering. I also implemented the suggested mod which gives you the rate indication on the LED which is pretty cool and very useful.

I cannot speak highly enough of this pedal. I can just say that our band's guitarist and me always fight over who will use it on gigs. He actually calls me before each gig to make sure I don't forget to pack it. I guess I might have to build another one. I found a few amazing preset settings which I use very often (in clock numbers for RATE and DEPTH): 9, 3 on Swirl, 11, 1 on Whirl, 2, 2 on Vibe and so on.

The Swirly Vibes patterns

The Tri-vibe is not a Uni-vibe clone and those seeking a Uni-vibe could be disappointing as it doesn't employ the chorus mode which the Uni-vibe is famous for. However as it does have the vibrato mode and 2 swirly/whirly modes, it is a very good replacement and can actually be even more useful than the original. I, therefore, named it Swirly Vibes and painted the enclosure with patterns of waves, swirls and whirls which I really really like. It took me forever to decide on the graphics and after several attempts which failed I went with this great pattern which I got from a designers website.

I discarded the Shake, Rattle and Roll modes naming and just painted a wave a whirl and a swirl to designate the proper switch mode.

This fantastic ROG schematic and layout can be found here. Don't pass on this one. I used the Tri-Vibe name for a while with the old enclosure but after redesigning the enclosure from scratch and putting so much effort into the swirly waves patterns I decided to name it "Swirly Vibes". This is exactly what the pedal does best - swirly vibes.

Bellow are two audio clips demonstrating the Swirly Vibes pedal. One demonstrates the Tri-Vibe with a clean telecaster tone, and the second utilizes the High Tyme Octavia/Axis fuzz in front of the Tri-Vibe. I used all three presets with several settings on each. Just run through the audio clips to hear it's versatility.

The Mixcloud player is slightly less intuitive than the regular Soundcloud because you have to press - "UP NEXT" to get the playlist to show you the tracks, but it is equally well designed.

Tri-Vibe Swirly Vibes Pedal by Doron Barness on Mixcloud

Page the 1st or First Page

As discussed earlier on this blog, the amps used by guitarists as well as the guitars, pedals and picking techniques, all contributed evenly to the magical electrical guitar tones produced during the 60's and the 70's. 

While most guitarists rocked the world with their Voxes, Fenders, Hiwatts and Marshalls, there were still other brands which became legendary later on when people realized that some of the great recordings ever were made using them.

Such are the Supro amps made by Valco in Chicago throughout the 50's and 60's. Although cheaper than most Fender amps they still sounded great and were quite popular in the US as well as in the UK. It is believed that one Jimmy Page has recorded the entire Led Zeppelin debut album in 1969 using a Fender Telecaster, a ToneBender Fuzz pedal, a Wah pedal and a 16T Supro combo amp. The sought after sound of Page is also a result of great playing, great mic placement and great recording techniques but surely this American style amp has something to do with it.

I have listened to some software plugins simulating the response of such an amp and decided it was worth the effort. When the Runoffgroove (ROG) team came out with the updated design of the Supreaux Deux I couldn't be happier. What's more, they actually own one of these babies so they really rtied to nail the sound rather than the FET-TUBE conversion design. I was so pleased with the former designs of the THOR and the ENGLISH CHANNEL, that I knew it was going to be a blast. The circuit is driven by 18V which gives the sound more headroom and lower gain. I really love fuzz boxes going into low gain and cleaner amps because it really gets the fuzz sounds better defined and less muddy. It was a pretty simple build and I did a pretty good job, I guess following the ROG design. I placed a 9V battery in the enclosure and connected a regular 9V power so that I could have the 18V together until I build  a 9V to 18V converter.

The results were great. Perfect clean-to-crunch DRIVE flexibility and a good lo-pass TONE control to keep that sizzle I love so much. the FAT switch is a mod I added to keep more of the low end when playing the neck pickups.The amp sounded good with humbuckers but superb with a Tele. Clean sounds and edgey and warm and the overdriven crunch is in the style of "Good Times Bad Times" opening chords. What a Blues Driver. The amp is not complete without a fuzz and a Wah. A treble Booster like the Ranger (ROG Omega) did wonders with the Drive knob about half way and north. Using a Tele you can really nail some of the crunchier sounds on LZ1 album where page doesn't use a fuzz. He engages the fuzz on solos mostly. for a Pagier sound always keep the mic away from the cabinet to get more room, and add some reverb.

The one thing I really needed now was a Germanium SolaSound ToneBender mkII....yeah right.

Well I did start looking for the best ToneBender mkII clone out there. While it may not be the Ultimate fuzz ever (the Maestro FuzzTone or Tonebender mkI are nominated for best ever), it is supposed to be quite versatile and sweet. Stay tuned.

The Supreaux Deux schematic which I call First Page or better yet Page the First can be found here. A 9-to-18V converter can be found here or on this thread.

Lester Wires - Live at the Rehab Center (31.7.2012)

click the link below to jump over to the SoundCloud playlist
Lester Wires - Live at the Rehab Center (31.7.2012)


Just thought I ought to share this on my blog too.
A link to the Soundcloud playlist of some of the songs from the last Lester Wires show.
All fuzz and distortion guitars employ pedals which appear on this blog...
You can download all songs or just listen.
Anyway, more to come.

The Fluffy Fuzz Cake

The Big Muff Pi (~3.14) was the first major fuzz pedal by the NY based company - Electro-Harmonix (EHX). The legend says that the first units were brought in 1969 to Manny's Music Store on 48th Street, NY, and a week or so later Hendrix picked one up. The circuit was aimed to recreate some of the fuzz tones conceived by Hendrix using a more complicated design than that of most fuzzes from those days. It was supposed to do everything the FuzzFace did with some extra features and a nicer sustain.

Over the years, a lot of Big Muff variants appeared, each with it's own characteristics and subtleties. Some due to part changes by EHX and some by the fact the the company went out of business and other manufacturers issued they're own versions. Gilmour switched from the Silicon FuzzFace to a BigMuff Pi somewhere around 1977. All the solo guitar work on Animals and The Wall incorporates a Big Muff. Santana also used this unit during the mid 70's. During the late 80's and early 90's the vintage Big Muffs and other variants, most notably the Russian Sovtek version, were a big part of the grungy alternative sound of the bands which defined the genre like Sonic Youth, Smashing Pumpkins and Nirvana. Mudhoney went as far as naming their Ep "Superfuzz Bigmuff". Having so much legacy and history around this pedal, I had to try it but I couldn't decide which version to go for. It was actually the first fuzz pedal that was named a distortion pedal.

The original circuit I built was taken from the GeneralGuitarGadgets site shown here. Some of the changes made by EHX over the years as well as the designs made by other manufacturers can be found on the same website here. Although they rely on the idea of cascaded gain stages with diode clipping on each stage, they all sound a little different (tonestack, caps, trannies etc.).

The most gratifying unit I built around the Big Muff concept was the ROG 22/7. The ROG team did it again with a super cool design to get the entire pie in one bite. The name comes from the number pi, but the sound is the fluffy triangular pie which we love so much (How did EHX ever get a way with such a nasty name for a pedal?). The most notable thing about the pedal is that it is based around a CD4049UB IC which makes up the gain stages, and the fact that you have 3 variants in a single circuit!!! the original classic sound, the flatter Russian Sovtek sound and the scooped Ram's Head version. What a great pedal. Every guitarist I played with loved it. It's sustain is super smooth and you can get a very heavy Billy Corgan/Thurston Moore sound easily. Very very cool. The circuit can be found here. A lot of info on this pedal can be found on the Pistones website.

I admit that I did not intend to dwelve so deep into Big Muff territory when I first started my quest for the ultimate fuzz, but this is a great versatile fuzz unit and could easily satisfy grunge heads and fuzz heads alike.