Fuzz Testosteron

The Mastotron Clone. Even the LED is pink

Well, here's a quick one. I was asked by a friend to build a Mastotron Fuzz clone which would be just like the real ZVEX but in a PINK enclosure. The main specification he was after was ultra bassy fuzziness. Reading a little about this beast I thought this would be a good choice. 

The schematic and layout seemed like a modified fuzz face with some added controls. He also wanted to do the artwork so I thought why not. 

I ordered the parts and got straight away to work. I really got more and more into vero boards lately so I gave it a go and made a vero layout from the tagboardeffects blog using a regular prefboard and using the leads of the parts as connecting lines to emulate the vero board layout. I really like this idea. 

This pedal is not a legendary one nor do I know of anyone who used it in the history pages of rock...but this thing can really roar. Actually I've never heard such a great bass fuzz before. This thing is the perfect fuzz for stoner rock and doom metal guitarists who need their sound to explode with fireworks. It has the square wave character of muffs and faces but it has this extra grit that makes you go 'uhhhh'. The controls have PUSH/RELAX (just a Pregain), FUZZ (of course), PW (pulse width, a.k.a. smoothness), TONE (very effective) and VOLUME (actually not a loud pedal even fully CW).

knobs, from the left: VOLUME TONE PW FUZZ PUSH/RELAX

I went to give the guy his pedal down at an underground bar where he played with his band and they hooked up the pedal right there in the middle of the song, like they were waiting for it. The pedal sounded great right away (except for having a bit of a low volume).

I used 2N3904 silicon transistors which are supposed to be great, but if he asks for more volume I might switch to higher gain ones or just add a booster stage before the volume knob.

Again, I don't know too much about this one but it's not for everyone. It's not a muff or a face, it's really something else, which is very typical of the ZVEX line of pedals. He is always tinkering to get more options and a wider palette of sounds from his designs. 

Definitely a worthwhile design for fans of Witchcraft, Witch, Windhand, Cosmolux, Hellbender, Blowback and other Stoner/Doom rock bands. Did I say that I even had the LED ordered in pink?

Here is the layout and the ZVEX description of the pedal.

I did a demo using guitar and bass for this one:

Tyme for some High Octave Fuzz

Ever since I have been reading and listening to various type fuzz circuits I was always intimidated a bit to build  an octave fuzz, mainly 'cause I don't really care to much for octave pedals. Sure they are interesting pedals to play with and toy around, and some great guitarists have made some great solos using octavers, both up and down, but it's not what I am usually after in my sound. Anyway what I'm trying to say is...boy...was I wrong.

My first attempt at an Octave fuzz pedal was made by tampering with a Jordan BossTone fuzz which had a pot for battery starving effect (a tip from freestompboxes.com). This yielded an Octave Down effect with a lot of buzzing which sounds a bit like the Motorcycle effect done by Brian May. Pretty cool, hu? but I'll post this one later on.

Then I read an interesting story about Hendrix playing the Purple Haze solo through the mysterious Octavia fuzz made by Roger Mayer. It is told that one of these pedals was stolen, and reappeared after Hendrix's death under the Tycobrahe brand. After listening to more tracks allegedly played through this Octavia pedal I realized that this pedal has a lot to do with what I call the Hendrix sound. Although he used the Maestro FuzzTone and various Fuzz Faces quite a bit, he also used a pedal called the Axis Fuzz and the Octavia. Both of these pedals sound fantastic and very versatile so I could n't sit still, of course, knowing that they are both in one medium difficulty circuit.

Wondering the web for circuits I ended up using the GGG circuit which had some new features like negative ground, PREGAIN knob, polarity protection and also featured the Octave On/Off switch, so that it's actually two pedals in one. The first part of the circuit is actually the highly acclaimed Roger Mayer Axis Fuzz and the second part is the Octave-up which used a coil transformer for frequency conversion. Mind you that the later Roger Mayer Octave Fuzz is a different circuit and does not have the transformer for the octave up thing. From what I understand the original pedal did include a transformer for the frequency doubling.

I ordered some parts from SmallBear and Mammoth, breadboarded the sucker and when I saw that it was all good I boxed it and called the pedal the "High Tyme" fuzz and for a very good reason. As soon as I plugged my guitar in I was back in Psychedelic Ladyland. This pedal is so sweet you wanna eat it. The Axis-fuzz circuit is musical, smooth and rich. It actually sounds much better and more defined than your usual Fuzz Face, and more vintage sounding than any BigMuff if you wanna go 60's. You can play around with the INTENSITY knob but it really sounds good anywhere on the clock. Once you engage the Octave everything goes berserk. You can roll off the guitar knob or use the PREGAIN and as you roll it down you can get a cleaner octave which can sound very interesting on the high notes on the neck pickup. What I love even more is the sound of the pedal on Bass. I spent an entire night playing bass using the pedal with a phaser right after it. The sound was so inspiring that I couldn't stop. It can get really nasty and quirky on the higher settings. Btw, for the Octave on/off switch just cut the transformer's primary channel diode from the ground and hook it on a SPST switch. Yes, it's that simple as shown here.

I don't know if this circuit is the exact circuit Hendrix played through but it is definitely out there. It's probably the closest I got so far to really reaching my goal on this quest. Lately I've heard of a band called T2 which released one album "It'll All Work Out In Boomland" in 1970 and boom they split. On the new CD release there is a bonus track called "Questions and Answers". 17 years old guitarist, Keith Cross, plays 3 amazing solos on this track which climb up the fuzzy scale throughout the track. The fuzz he uses has got to be the Octave Fuzz 'cause no other fuzz sounds quite like it. you can listen to it using this link. You won't regret it. If you wanna build it.and you need the schematic...here is the magical recipe for this Psycho potion.