King Watt - The HiWatt grinder king

The WIIO clone - KING WATT

When the fuzz era began in the early sixties most players hooked up their fuzz pedals to the amps which were available at the time. The best names on the market were Fender, Marshall, Vox, Gibson and maybe a few small boutique companies. The combinations of the guitars, fuzz pedals and amps defined what we all know today as the sound of the 60's. By the end of the decade new sounds started emerging due to the demand of leading players trying to extract more juice, grind and power from their amps. Live shows of super bands like The Who and Led Zeppelin were all about modified amplifiers which made their shows thrilling and ear piercing as ever.

The 70's started off with a totally different sound with Marshall issuing their powerful JCM-800 amps and Orange amplifiers infiltrating the heavier rock scene. Fuzz pedals still remained very popular but now it was more about overdrive and smooth distortion and less about buzzy fuzzy noises. One name on the British scene stood out as the amp for high power rock with a very distinctive tone and grit which had incredible dynamics and picking sensitivity as opposed to the compressed Marshall stacks so popular with heavy metal.

The Sound City amp prior to the HiWatt brand

Hylight Electronics issuing the first HiWatt amps

HiWatt was started by Dave Reeves in 1966 building amps for Ivor Arbiter's store Sound City (yeah, the same Arbiter who sold Fuzz Face pedals). In 1968 Reeves started building his own designs with 50W (DR-504), 100W (DR-103) and 200W (DR-201) amps which gained huge popularity.

First users of the HiWatts - The Who

The HiWatt golden age began when Pete Townshend (and bassist Entwistle), responsible for promoting the Marshall 100W Superlead (created for him in 1965 in order to get a Fender sound with higher power), started using Sound City amps around 1967 because they were cleaner and sounded better. Reeves modified the Sound City amps under his own brand called Hylight and the Hiwatt line was born. By 1970 leading guitarists like Jimmy Page, David Gilmour, Martin Barre (Jethro Tull), Robert Fripp and Townshend himself redefined the British sound by moving to HiWatt amplifiers. Even Hendrix added a Hiwatt stack next to his sacred Marshall stack to get bigger sound. Many others were spotted using HiWatt amps like Steve Hackett of Genesis (1971), Manfred Mann's Mick Vickers, Peter Banks (Yes, Flash) and the list is probably much longer.

The Classic Custom HiWatt 100W head, similar to the DR-103

My Favorite HiWatter - Mr. Fripp

When it came to the sound everybody had their own noise box hooked up and a booster of some sort (Echoplex, Rangemaster, etc.). Pete hooked up his HiWatt with a Univox Superfuzz and got the most powerful tone in guitar history. Gilmour with a silicon Fuzz Face (after giving up on the germanium version) and later with a Big Muff ruled the scene with his melodic, smooth, compelling and irresistible force. Jimmy Page used a Tone Bender mkII and had the best riffs in town. Fripp allegedly used a Baldwain Burn Buzzaround re-invented prog metal and avantgarde prog. And then there's Hendrix....well with Hendrix there was no place left to walk on, and his sound was like a train and a jet colliding at full speed while an army of alien robots in the jungle are trying to destroy the galaxy. I think that's pretty close.

The legendary Crimson line-up. Even Wetton is using a HiWatt

The best Jethro Tull incarnation (1969) had Martin Barre and Glenn Cornick using HiWatts 

Gilmour and his HiWatt.
He had 6 in parallel

Page bowing away his Gibson on a pair of HiWatts

With an iconic piece of history like that you can't really rest your mind until you played one of these monsters. Well buying one is not an option and a software simulation is not really good for a live band situation. So I thought I would build an overdrive pedal which would get me near that sound. Turns out that Catalinbread had 2 pedals to get the job done. A modified Hiwatt version of the amp Page was using during the Royal Albert Hall concert in 1970 (RAH) and a classic HiWatt DR-103 version (WIIO). Aiming more for that classic DR-103 tone I started getting parts to build the WIIO circuit using a schematic I found on the freestompboxes.com forum and the great layouts by GuitarFX Layouts (http://tagboardeffects.blogspot.com) and Mike Livesly's.

Hendrix using a Sound City stack next to his Marshall one

Catalinbread is a great boutique pedal company and they have some great designs for fuzz, overdrives, boosters and what not. Probably their most revered designs are the amp emulation pedals and the Dirty Little Secret (DLS) Marshall-in-a-box pedal is probably their best. When it comes to fuzz pedals I really enjoy getting close to the original designs. With amp-like pedals I really dig the Runoffgroove designs. It was in the HiWatt that I first realized that I had no where to go but Catalinbread.

Being such a big circuit I knew I didn't want to make mistakes and I spent hours reading and listening to demos before I decided to build the WIIO clone. I knew that Townshend's sound was not very interesting for me and was just plain loud. On the other hand, Robert Fripp and Martin Barre are exactly the sort of sound which I like. Barre for its great tone and Fripp for its complexity and dynamics. For me that was enough and I went ahead and got everything I needed.

Whenever special resistor values are in shortage I get two in parallel or series and get the desired value spot on. same goes for capacitors although I try to avoid ceramics for anything above 1nF and use mylar or polypropylene types. For the 9.1V Zener I used 1N4739A which are excellent and for the BS170 I just bought them from Mammoth. Although I don't like the vero-board designs I trusted the layout and used a regular pref-board and soldered the parts like it was a vero-board.

The WIIO board on the bottom (right) and on the top side (left).
The soldering is actually point to point and no connection.

I love when I hook up the pedal's pots and switches and it works on the first attempt with no audio quirkiness. The first chop with the GAIN cranked and I knew  this was it. That rich complexity and sharp grit. Really is different than any other pedal I ever played. None of that smooth Vox and Marshall and none of the Fender sagginess. Sheer raw power. Not easy to comprehend. Now, after a few hours of playing and trying all sort of nasty combinations, I am starting to get the hang of it. Playing it clean isn't all that interesting. With the GAIN high and TREBLE above noon you really start enjoying it. This is a definite keeper for me and highly recommended for any prog fanatic. Sounds better IMO with humbuckers than with single coils but once you fire up a fuzz in front - it really doesn't matter what pickups you play.

Enclosure covered in masking tape,
and sketched on

When boxing the unit I used my successful method of covering the enclosure with a paper masking tape which really facilitates the drilling process giving clean and smooth holes. I also draw some designs on the tape to decide what hole configuration I should use.

After that I mount the circuit with the knobs, jacks and switches and then I start thinking about the how it should really look. For this pedal I really didn't want to use the original WIIO name because I just think it's not a very good name and because I built this pedal thinking about Robert Fripp, David Gilmour and Martin Barre rather than Pete Townshend. I thought of 10 names until I decided to stick with KING WATT. Pretty good, I guess.

The finished pedal after painting and testing

So that's it. Hope you build it and enjoy it,

Get the schematics and layouts on:
https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6AdN3AaptdFzVlBs_UWXdjPIvtrSxNUkLcaNJRgYow8gYvCe2fd2aLdxm85jszzT8XoiES1uvUf_7mbKmB3i682oM5HLAs6tctT8XUa0Pn5MDs54eifWfXC3dTNZ7cLKCnvewjSd_SeI/s1600/wiio.gif
and
http://tagboardeffects.blogspot.co.il/2012/04/catalinbread-wiio.html

A nice video demo from Bobby Devito
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xb5lUnvCUPQ
and the Gearmanndude WIIO demo:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BoiE1JfIEgY

and my own clone with ES humbuggies and singies:

WIIO demo by Doron Barness on Mixcloud

WIIO clone demo with Humbuckers by Doron Barness on Mixcloud

The Real Muff Pie

The Big Muff Pi clone

OK, you guys, we are very close to getting FuzzQuest blog on a climax this time.

If I had to choose 3 fuzz pedals to achieve the widest spectrum of fuzz sounds I would say that the 3 top pedals would be the Maestro Fuzz Tone, The Fuzz Face and the EHX Big Muff Pi (of course I could have chosen 3 other pedals if you asked me that question tomorrow morning). The Maestro Fuzz Tone is what you would call an early fuzz sound (1962-1966), similar in many ways to the early Tone Benders, raspy, buzzy, noisy and grainy like the Fuzzrite, Orpheum and the Super fuzz. The Fuzz Face is the legendary Hendrix or Gilmour fuzz sound (1967-1973), very fat, smooth and much heavier. However, when you take fuzz a step  further (1971-2013) into metal, doom, grunge, acid blues and other heavy rock forms, there is one fuzz to rule them all. It's almost the end of the journey for you if you are after that kind of sound. After that you can maybe chain 2 fuzz pedals in a row, have boosters in front, make some mods to the design, but it doesn't really get any heavier than this (there are some attempts, though...).

The Big Muff Pi pedal is the holy grail of fuzz pedals for many rock guitarists. It's very much like the Tube Screamer in its legendary reputation. Both designs were pretty simple and became the source for numerous versions, clones, re-issues and variants. Both designs became cornerstones in rock history and made a huge impact on the development of rock and guitar sound. You could say that the Tube screamer is the overdrive in the same way that the Big Muff is the Fuzz pedal and it's what many people would describe as the sound of fuzz, without going into details too much.

The Big Muff designed by Bob Myer and Mike Matthews was originally based on the earlier designs of fuzz pedals heavily used by the late great Jimi James, a.k.a. Jimi Hendrix, and was first issued in NYC around 1969. The fuzz that roared out of this pedal was so thick, rich, creamy and heavy that once people started using it, there was no way back. The name Big Muff with the PIE sign is obviously a sex related name (see the 22/7 fuzz post on this blog), based on the association of the word muff pie (oh boy) with the words fuzz, fuzzy, fuzz face and the general habit of pedal designers to name pedals after sexist male associations (Ever heard of the Merkin fuzz?). The pedal retained sound consistency due to the use of Silicon transistors and the use of 4 of them meant you had a buffer pre gain stage, a dual gain stage similar to older designs and an active tone control. Luxurious design! throughout the history of this pedal, various transistors and a lot of the passive parts values changed. Sometimes for getting different sound, but mostly due to changes in the parts inventory of the factory at the time. This resulted in a huge amount of variants. The most famous versions became the Triangle (for the arrangement of the knobs) which is the original design with its silver enclosure, the Ram's Head version which had slightly different values and transistors, the Green Russian made in Russia during the mid-90s with its famous khaki army-like enclosure and the 1977 V4 design with its red and black graphics which became the most famous graphical design for the big muffs re-issues.

Below are two images of typical BMP versions from various eras:

The USA designs from the late 60s through the 70s and the re-issues of the 90s and the 21st century

The Russian designs from the 90s

It would be redundant to go deep into the history and circuit design of this beast of a pedal as there is so much info on the web already. Just take a look at:

http://www.kitrae.net/music/music_big_muff.html

http://www.kitrae.net/music/big_muff_history.html

or

http://www.pisotones.com/BigMuffPi/psst/BMP_versions.htm

a quick version review can be found on:

http://www.kitrae.net/music/music_big_muff_tone_differences.html

On these pages you can find anything from the transistors used on each design, the schematic nuances, the enclosure changes and the artistic graphic designs. Who played what is also probably very interesting for many people. Hendrix used the original version during in his late career, Gilmour started using Big muffs around 1975-1976 and later on. He used the original Triangle version and the Violet and Ram's Head version from the early 70s .Billy Corgan and his Pumpkins used a 1978 op-amp version from 1978 in the Siamese Dream album. 8 tracks of muffed guitars at once all through a Marshall JCM800 with a Strat or a Les Paul. "Huge Huge Sound" was what Billy called it. After the album came out the price of a BMP pedal sky rocketed from 40 bucks to 200 bucks!!! What a comeback. J. Mascis of Dinosaur Jr. and Witch used a lot of early BMP versions throughout his career. He likes to put two in a row for super thunderous muff sound. Jack White of the White Stripes has used the BMP quite extensively although he is also known for using a lot of early fuzz pedals as well. 

A huge list of BMP users can be found on:
http://www.kitrae.net/music/big_muff_users.html

The list includes so many names it's hard to count but just to name a few: Robert Fripp (Guild Foxey Lady 1972-1974), Steve Howe of Yes (Triangle), Thurston Moore and Lee Renaldo of Sonic Youth (Sovtek "Civil War"), Kurt Cobain of Nirvana, John Frusciante of Red Hot Chilli Peppers, The Edge of U2, Pete Townshend of The Who, Dan Aurbach of the Black Keys, Kevin Shields of My Bloody Valentine, Jamie Cook of Arctic Monkeys, Cliff Burton of Metallica, Ace Frehley of Kiss, Jeff Pinkus and Paul Leary of the Butthole Surfers, Stephen Malkmus of Pavement and many many others. 

The ZUS Pi

Enough of the Big muff stories and on to the DIY clone build: My build was made with a wedged enclosure and a circuit design very similar to the Violet Ram's Head BMP from 1973, the early Guild Foxey Lady and also similar to the transistor V4 design from the 1977-1978 era. These versions were known for their use of the 2N5133 transistors. In fact the importance of these trannies is most crucial for the sound on Q2 and Q3. Q1 and Q4 are less critical so I used BC238 trannies which are medium gain trannies. The knobs are chicken black and the 3PDT switch enables true bypass. The sound is pretty amazing, rich and smooth fuzz on any setting. The TONE is super effective and on different areas really changes the sound of the fuzz, it's not the regular passive hi-cut we know from other designs. This is why the BMP tone stack became so popular and was implemented in so many different pedals. The SUSTAIN sounds dull on the minimum setting but anywhere above it is absolutely fuzz-a-licious. I used orange rooster knobs and painted the wedge enclosure with some flame-like brush strokes.

Build any of the versions as shown below:

http://www.generalguitargadgets.com/projects/17-distortion/108-big-muff-pi

or:

http://www.tonepad.com/getFile.asp?id=95

or:

http://www.bigmuffpage.com/Big_Muff_Pi_versions_schematics_part1.html

http://www.bigmuffpage.com/Big_Muff_Pi_versions_schematics_part2.html

http://www.bigmuffpage.com/Big_Muff_Pi_versions_schematics_part3.html

What a huge selection of schematics, hu? Triangle or Ram's Head if you want vintage style. op-amp if you want the Smashing Pumpkins sound, Civil War or Green Russian for that grungy alternative rock sound. This is a monster fuzz any way you build it. Stack two in a row or one with an overdrive behind it or a fuzz face style pedal in front of it and you can get all sorts of fuzz bliss.

Here are some noises I made with my version:

Big Muff clone demo by Doron Barness on Mixcloud