A Palette of Tweeds - ROG's Azabache

Well, I'm really excited about posting today because I think one of my missions throughout this quest is over. A large part of my FuzzQuest has been devoted not to fuzz pedals but to amps or amp pedals which complement fuzz pedals. Over the past few years I have built the Thor (Marshall emulation), The English Channel (Vox) and the Professor Tweed (Fender), all Runoffgroove designs. I built other amp-pedals but I consider Vox, Marshall and Fender to be the most defining amps in fuzz history. Anyway they are all good pedals but there was something about the Tweed pedal which didn't sound right to me. It was good but I didn't get that Neil Young sound or Keith Richards sound which I really love. It was a good pedal for a fuzz kicking it, but as an overdrive it wasn't that rewarding.

So I started looking for more schematics and found that Wampler, BJFE and Catalinbread had some wicked stuff and I really wanted to give one of them a go. Just as I set out to, Runoffgroove came out with a very interesting design of a new Fender-like design which sounded good on paper. They called it Azabache. Surprising enough I also found a really nice guy who sent me the PCB for 10$ so I got the parts I needed and started to work. Usually I like building my own prefboards or tagboards but this time I thought "why not?"

The Azabache populated PCB 

The drilled enclosure almost ready

All sitting nice and comfy 

Ready for lock down

I love this combination of colors

I have played around with this pedal both in rehearsals and on stage and it always kicks ass. It is so versatile that it can go from muddy bluesy 50's style tweed to bright Black or Silver face country clean style. It's got warm overdrive that is to die for and with my telecaster it's just unbeatable. the SCOOP and BRIGHT switches are subtle but they do exactly as described and mixing with them on top of the TONE and GAIN knobs produce an endless amount of tones. I was so impressed by the range of colors it had that I named it Tweed Palette. Took me a while to decide on that name but...there it is.

This thing was not a kit. I just ordered the PCB and all the parts besides that were ordered separately. Just because someone asked I am mentioning this again:Q1 was 2N5457, Q2-4 were J201 and Q5 was 2N5088.

A mod from the RUnoffgroove team on DIY Stompboxes for reducing the trebleness of the pedal: Substitute the 47K resistor going to TONE 1 for a link (or a smaller value resistor).

I did some playing around with a tele and a cabinet simulator and sent it over the ROG guys with many thanks:

Now you probably want to know how it sounds with a fuzz. Well, with a silicon fuzz face like my Pink Face it sounds the best. Instant 60's fuzz. Did I say that half of my quest is over?

Anyway here is the ROG Azabache project and schematics. I would love to know how it stands next to the Catalinbread Formula No.5.

Amp pedals - The ROG Professor Tweed

After trying a few fuzz designs I started investigating the gear chain of some of my favorite guitar legends and I realized that although the fuzz pedals are a critical part of the chain there are other components which are just as cardinal as the pedals. There is the brain, the heart, hands and fingers and feel of the player. There are the strings, obviously, but once the vibrations are created they are turned to electric current through the pickup coils which are the first major factor in the sound. Mostly you can hear the difference between single coil pickups and Humbuckers. After that you have the pedals, the amp, the cabinet and speakers and the room, microphones and recording gear.

It seems after building some fuzz pedals the next gain stage is the amplifier. I have to give a big credit to the RunOffGroove website from which I learned so much. The guys over at ROG have some fantastic designs of circuits utilizing solid-state FETs to emulate the behavior of driven tube gain stages. With this they designed some serious emulations of classic amps by Fender, Vox and Marshal.

As part of my Fuzz Quest I started off with the simplest design of a classic Princeton amp so I built the Professor Tweed. It sounds like a late 50s amp which can go from clean to overdrive through the input GAIN knob. This was the first time I understood the difference in voicing quality and character between an overdrive and a fuzz. A fuzz is really over-the-top distortion which changes the original sound completely. The overdriven amp stage is softer and crunchier. Although the pedals sound great together with the fuzz boosting the input of the amp pedal, you can use the amp pedal alone as a great overdrive for guitar or Harmonica and it really gives you great classic Blues and Rock'n Roll tone. I have to say that the Professor lacks some sparkle and I always keep its TONE control on max. The mo' bass switch is a nice addition too. I ended up using additional tone control pedal after it to give it more sparkle. Also it sounds better with single coils than with Humbuckers. Humbuckers tend to have higher ouput level and drive the pedal to distortion even at low gain settings. You can get the schematic here.

In the next few posts I'll dive some more into overdrives as it really is part of the story.