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.

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.

The Ranger and the Boost

Having read so much about the British amps and the way guitarists circumvented their darker sound with a Treble Booster I thought it would be interesting to follow this path. Apparently the Treble Booster schematics appear a lot as fuzz schematics and it's no surprise as the main point of this simple circuit is too boost the signal going into the tube amps so that the amp can be saturated easier and get the warm fuzzy tone without having to crank the GAIN to 11. But not only that it tilts the spectrum so that you get higher gain with increasing frequency, it also adds some harmonics to the sound which really gives the sound a lot of character. At first I looked at the original Germanium versions of Dallas rangemaster and the Hornby Skewes. It seems like these little gadgets really did magic for a lot of legendary rock guitarists. Brian May used one driving a wall of VOX AC30 amps. Ritchie Blackmore, Tony Iommi, Martin Barre, Gilmour in his early days and Clapton in his Gibson days, all (so I've heard) used this booster as part of their signature sound using British amps. So what was I waiting for? the secret weapon of the late  60s sound? But I wanted a little more. Turns out that there are boosters which are used to drive amps and also fuzz pedals to even dirtier fuzz and grit but are not treble boosters. These are just plain old full boosters affecting the entire spectrum range. Now What? two pedals?

This is where I found again that the amazing Runoffgroove team had it all. The "Omega". Silicon and negative ground are a comfortable pair and the ability to tweak the RANGE from Treble to Full boost with a separate BOOST knob was all I needed.

Maaan....this pedal has such an impact it is remarkable. It's fantastic to use it before any pedal I use.

Before the English Channel (AC30 clone) it gives you great vintage bluesy sound. Before a Germanium Fuzz Face it makes the Fuzz much more focused and bright. Before any overdrive I tried it really opened up the sound and just sounds better. I kept the OMEGA symbol but changed the name to RANGER. A definite must on my fuzz quest list although not a classic fuzz. But is can sure make a lot of amps get fuzzed out.You can get the schematic here. 

The Rocking Marshall World

The Almighty Thor

If the Fender amps are the trademark sound of the classic American Blues, Rock'n Roll and Country, the Marshall amps are the definitive sound of Rock. Jim Marshall past away a few days ago and it's a good point to bring out another great pedal from Runoffgroove named "THOR". This design aims and succeeds in recreating that vintage Marshall amp character, clean or driven.

This circuit design uses again the Tubes-to-FETs process first suggested by Doug Hammond and later enhanced by the wonderful ROG team. This pedal is inspired by early designs of the JTM and Super Lead Marshall amps. These amps showed up in the UK in the mid 60's after Jim and his son Terry (JTM) tried to design a cheaper version of the classic american Fender Bassman using military American tubes.

Thor's Hammer on

The characteristic sound of these classic Marshall amps, which is the original Plexi sound, is what this pedal is all about. You can get close to the signature sound of Hendrix, Richie Blackmore, Pete Townsend, Angus Young, early Clapton, Steve Hackett, Billy Corgan, Dave Navarro, John Fogerty, Slash, Mick Ronson and the list goes on forever. You have a BRIGHT switch which gives you extra sparkle and a BOTTOM switch giving you more body emulating a large 12X4 Marshall cabinet. The GAIN knob goes from beautiful clean to hard overdriven blues rock crunch which is great for chords or soloing. I have used this pedal for a while now in the studio and live and it's my #1 go-to pedal with a Telecaster. You can get the schematic here.

Below are two clips of a few of the sounds which the Thor has to offer. I played the first clip with HB on a HiWatt amp emulation preset and the second on a Tele with single coils. The tracks are quite lengthy but you can just wonder around and hear what it is all about. As you will hear, The Marshall is the definition of rock guitar sound from Classic Rock, Country Blues Rock, Acid Rock, British Invasion Rock and Prog Rock to Punk Rock, Grunge, Alternative and Heavy Metal, This is the sound.

Hot Cloudcasts featuring Thor Demo by K. Zustang on Mixcloud

Single Coils Tele - Thor - HiWatt amp emulation by Doron Barness on Mixcloud