The Peachy Fuzz

The Peach Fuzz clone

This one is a little off my main path (or the king's highway) towards the ultimate fuzz. The PeachFuzz is one of those new boutique, over-the-top fuzz boxes which you see by the hundreds. Actually, some of the best pedals you can get today are made by little boutique companies which have an enormous amount of pedals or at least update their catalog quite often. Because a lot of them are hand made or partly hand made they can change their designs quite fast and have a new pedal on the market every month, be it a modern clone of a classic fuzz, a newly designed fuzz, vintage overdrives, delays, you name it. To pay some tribute to these great manufacturers, here's a short and partial list of boutique pedal brands:

D*A*M , Analog.Man, Keeley Electronics, El Nano, Frantone, Skreddy Pedals, Wampler, Catalinbread, Devi Ever, ZVex, Fulltone, Love Pedals, Way Huge and the list goes on and on.

All these boutique brands sell top quality, great sounding pedals and they all have some unique designs which make them stand out. Some focus on their own designs while others focus on getting that vintage tone of the great legends of the past. Luckily you can't start a pedal company without having a killer fuzz box on the shelf, so the number of fuzz circuits and variants grew over the past few years from dozens to hundreds, hence...the fuzz explosion, or as I call it, fuzz-plosion.

One company that had some great designs but went out of business is Frantone and for a long time I have been looking at their offerings and always wanted to build a "Cream Puff" clone which sounded very interesting to me. As my want-to-build list just got longer I forgot about it for a while until I stumbled upon an article which ranked the best 50 distortion, overdrive and fuzz pedals of all times. Needless to say, every pedal I have ever built or wanted to build was there: Big Muff Pi, Tube Screamer, Fuzz Face, Tone Bender, Klon Centaur, Maestro Fuzz Tone, Pro-Co Rat, Range Master, Tycobrahe Octavia, Hot Cake, Fuzz Factory, Boss BD2, you name it. Wow....what a list....you should really check it out, I have building noise boxes for a while now and I can safely say that the most important pedals in rock history are definitely there:

http://www.musicradar.com/news/guitars/50-of-the-best-overdrive-distortion-and-fuzz-pedals-398998/1

Going over the list it turns out that the Frantone PeachFuzz, which I've never heard of before, reached number 47! very nice. Had to listen to it a few times on Youtube before I set my mind on building one. I figured it's kinda like a Big Muff style of sound, but the Schematic looked different and I thought I maybe I can learn something new. Took me a long time to get around to it, and decide on the layout and version to choose from.

The Frantone Peach Fuzz. Entered the top 50! all-time distortion pedals 

Well, for the good things: It's a fuzz, it's tight and focused and it sounds like a good mid gain BMP clone...but......, it's just not that much of a fun-to-play with pedal. It has limited versatility with it's best with the FUZZ knob over half, and working the TONE knob can get you some Big Muff Pi op-amp style from the 70's. Not bad. But that's it. I figured it might be good to get some wicked sounds putting the fuzz in front of a real Muff or an overdrive so I decided to keep it and box it. After pairing it with some amp-like overdrive pedals I can say that I finally got it to sound good, focused and interesting.

Blue knobs, blue LED, blue texts and peachy gradients

Yellow faced and Blue "fonted" as on the original, Blue "knobed", blue LEDed and turned vertically for smaller rig footprint. I used the original circuit so there was no real way to change the name of the pedal. I just had to add some "peachy" texture so I painted the enclosure to give it more peach gradients.

Over the past few years I have tried a lot of circuits which didn't get boxed and remained naked in a drawer. This one got boxed because it's just a good sounding fuzz. It behaves well in a band setup and it gives great chords and solos.

So, the verified layout can be found on the Tagboardeffects blog:

http://tagboardeffects.blogspot.co.il/2012/03/frantone-peachfuzz.html

The schematic I used is given here: http://i50.tinypic.com/1zc1eg4.jpg

The fact that this pedal is extinct by now makes it a better collector's DIY item and I think that recently I have grown more and more fond of its thunder.

FuzzBoxGirl's youtube video was removed for some reason so I added this video as there aren't many other PeachFuzz videos on the web anymore: 

And if you can handle the power of this pedal, just listen below. I played a single coils tele through the PeachFuzz clone on a HiWatt 70's emulation amp. Listen to the various settings and then with a ROG Thor just behind the fuzz. Some of the riffs are also played with a treble booster in front of the PeachFuzz. This baby really roars. Take care, rock on!

PeachFuzz demo by Doron Barness on Mixcloud

The Rites of Fuzz - The Ritefuzz: revisited and enhanced

The Green Spirit FuzzRite clone

Ever since I started this blog I had this sound in my mind which I knew I just have to understand. I was always attracted to those elusive grainy buzz stutters of the early fuzzes. The problem with early fuzzes is that no one really knows what really happened in those studios back then.

Even after devouring every piece of information on the web, there are some unsolved mysteries regarding who used what and how and exactly when. The combinations are endless with the amount of differences the guitars, pedals and amps had back then. Transistors and components changed a lot and a lot of the stuff was customized.

As an example, think of the "Spirit in the Sky" by Norman Greenbaum which played a modified Tele with a fuzz circuit build inside the guitar, or the sound of Davie Allen and the Arrows which used parked wah in front of his Fuzz like Mick Ronson during the Spiders era. If you really want to understand those sounds, you have to start buying or building stuff.

Well, some of the best fuzz sounds ever recorded were never really confirmed as to how the sound was created. When I started building stuff, one of my first fuzz builds was the Orpheum Fuzz which was a simple silicon version which I decided to box. The sound was so far out and I really got to hear my guitar play Sky Saxon's incredible fuzz sound which was so sax-like. I was in heaven. Today I can really verify that the Orpheum Si fuzz played with a tele, volume knob a bit low, and through a VOX AC30 amp or sim cab, can be amazingly close to the sound I was after. I guarantee anyone who loves those ripped mid 60's garage sound will love this combination. It beats the Jordan Bosstone by a 1000 miles.

Yet, the Orpheum is so far out, that it won't give you the end of the scale which is Ennio Morricone's classic spaghetti western fuzz. For that you probably need a Mosrite Fuzzrite or a Maestro Fuzz Tone, and yes, you still need a tele and a Vox cab.

So I built the RFNR Green Bomb which was great but in 2 years of having it, I never really played it live a lot and I always ended up using the mighty Orpheum. After revisiting the circuit for the 20th time I finally ran into the John Kallas modded version which implemented some enhanced features. Now, the Fuzzrite is such a simple circuit that it would be really hard to achieve all those sounds in my head without some additions which would only do the circuit justice.

So, the simple circuit, shown below, just goes to show how closely related all these garage fuzz schemes. A few value changes can have a strong effect with such a small part count Although very close to the Fuzzrite design, the Orpheum is a much stronger design with many similarities in sound to the Shinei Fuzz Companion FY-2. If you ever run into Psycho Candy by Jesus and the Mary Chain, you'll notice right at the first chord the FY-2. If you like the Ventures, Dick Dale, The seeds, The Stooges and Garage Psych in general, 80% of these bands, I guess played a Fuzzrite at some point between 1966-1969.

Variations on the basic Fuzzrite design from the Aronnelson gallery

I ended up ripping the guts out of my Green Spirit (RFNR Green Bomb) and replacing it with a true Fuzzrite and then added the mods recommended by John Kallas. These are basically

1. 22k resistor from 2n2 tone cap to ground.
2. An extra TONE pot with a 100n cap to control the highs (seems that I like this pot cranked most of the time).
3. An added J201 gain stage to bring the volume back up at the end of the circuit so you easily get unity volume.
4. A higher cap value on a switch so that the DEPTH/FUZZ pot can yield fuller and fatter sound.
5. An extra pot for PREGAIN which helps getting the sound of a lowered guitar volume knob.

The John Kallas version can be found here:

http://johnkvintageguitars.homestead.com/Effects/Fuzz-ODs/Mosrite/01-Fuzzrite_with_mods.png

And, of course, it is always worth to visit the great layouts by Mark and Mirosol on TagboardFX blog: http://tagboardeffects.blogspot.co.il/2010/07/mosrite-fuzzrite.html

That's what I really love about building fuzz circuits. Getting the best possible design is part of the fun. So now I have a new Green Spirit, named after Greenbaum and his Spirit in the Sky guitar tone. I could have easily found 10 different names for that pedal based on the words Hoodoo, Seeds, Ventures, Misirlou, Spaghetti Westerns, Devil's Rumble and the list goes on.

In the demo below I simply played around with the knobs to get some of the tones I was looking for. 2 2N222A trannies were used because the original 2N2926 NPN trannies haven't arrived yet and I couldn't wait. A tele and a VOX AC30 cab sim at both ends of this wonderful beast with some added fender '63 style spring reverb. 

Don't miss out on this one. If you have to build one fuzz to rule them all, one fuzz for all your crazy 60's aspirations, one fuzz - grainy and harsh, buzzy and saxy, zippy and gnarly then this is IT !!! Even the "Satisfaction" riff sounds amazing with this pedal. Don't believe me? check out the demo and skip to 14:36.

Green Spirit - Fuzzrite (Tele+AC30) by Doron Barness on Mixcloud

Fuzzquest shares Joe Gore's Fuzz detective video

Wow....I just have to share this video as this guy is on a true fuzz quest for 60s Germanium mayham. Take 12 pedals and play the same chain and same riffs, chords, whatever so that you can actually understand the different attitude of each one. I love the extra stuff he puts as what each fuzz was famous for and some of the famous riffs recorded with it.

Check out his blog and his other related videos. Great job!

Silicon Tone Bender mkII: Revisited

The Led Bender

This is the first time I am revisiting a pedal and rebuilding it all over again. As you probably already know, the Tone Bender is one of the most elusive and tricky fuzz pedals around. The Germanium versions are hard to bias and you have to order specially selected transistors. This is not all that difficult once you understand how to measure hfe (gain) and leakage. Nevertheless, I have never built a true vintage Germanium Tone Bender and when I do, it will probably be a Prescription Electronics Yard Box or a true MK I version.

Anyway, I let the first Led Bender go and now it is happily crushing stages around the Zurich area with a really great band called Rivercash. I couldn't live without it so I had to build another one, and again, I tried starting out with the regular silicon versions which are running around the web. What can I say? another flop. No version sounded good and I couldn't understand why. The next thing I did was go back to the Hot Silicon version which sounded so well with my first Led Bender build. Voila...like magic. Wonderful buzz fuzz duzz muzz nuzz.

http://fuzzquest.blogspot.co.il/2012/11/bending-your-tone-for-page.html

I re-checked some of the biasing issues and ended up going closer to the Yard Box version with the 3.3k resistor attached to the Fuzz pot. All other biasing resistors seemed OK. Next, I changed the input capacitor on the FAT switch from 10uF to 100nF to get the Yard Box input cap. Transistors, as before Q1 and Q4 low gain 2N2369. Q2 2N3904 or some other medium gain tranny. Q3 BC108 or other medium gain tranny. I also tried 2N222A at Q3 and it was equally great. The tone knob was reversed so that cranking it would enable a fuller tone and CCW would make it thin and nasty.

The real magic with this pedal is on the lower settings of the Fuzz/Attack pot. Between 0 and 4 (on a 1 to 10 scale), the fuzz has some really great sounding crunch with the TONE knob crancked for full body. Lowering the guitar volume knob a little gives you some great unheard overdrives.

Here are some gut shots:

And about the artwork: I started with the Gold Glitter BB1590 from Mammoth and started painting using the same concept of the Zoso sign from Jimmy Page and added the other Zeppelin symbols around the sides, and of course, my ZUS logo which really complements the Page Zoso.

So, don't let this one go unbuilt. It's silicon, so it's guaranteed to deliver. And you know the best thing? When I hooked it up in front of a silicon Fuzz Face? AAAAmmmmaaazzziiing tone. You can really dial those Stoner Rock, Doom, Garage, Noise Grunge, Psychedelic Heavy Rock sound.

Probably one of my top 5 fuzz combinations!

Fuzz On.

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

Ginger Bread Bass. Hot from the oven

It has has been a while since I revamped my bass sound palette. I have been using bass fuzzes, distortions and filters of all kinds and I was pretty satisfied. I love the RAT clone on bass giving me the Kim Gordon, Sonic Youth style. I love the Mu-Tron III or the Tri-Vibe (Uni-Vibe) on bass for some really wacked synthy filtering sounds, and I always sleep well after a night out with a Big Muff, Germanium Fuzz Face or Fuzzrite for killer chain-saw bass riffs. One thing I never got was that sweet overdrive of those old Ampeg amps. Even the Runoffgroove Flipster was not a constant lodger on my rig since I was just not using it enough although it sounded pretty strong and biting. When Runoffgroove came out with the Ginger circuit and stated that it was an improvement over the Flipster, I couldn't resist and it has been sitting on my wish list for over a year.

The original 1965-1971 Ampeg SB-12 Portaflex.
A 12" recording work horse.

Well I finished it and ordered the most beautiful ginger-sparkly-rust enclosure on Mammoth Electronics. When I first played it I knew that it will most definitely replace the Flipster on the bass rig and that just maybe I found that 60's bass sound I love so much. Moreover, what really stunned me was the great overdrive sound it gave me on my electric guitar with humbuckers. Wow, if you want to drive your guitar with some heavy bass fuzz riffs, this unit can really complement a good fuzz for ultra pumping riffs.

The Project itself was not difficult and the noise was not enough to go and replace the trimmers with fixed resistors once you bias the 2N5457 Q1 and Q2. In fact, I always socket my trannies so that I can replace them or test a few before settling down. I did have to troubleshoot a bit. On the first attempt to bias Q1 I realized that the trimmer does not change the drain voltage at all. I found out the circuit ground was not connected. What a shame. Then I saw it still didn't work after I connected the ground. Found out another connection was not properly soldered or was it a cold soldering case? I don't know but once the little troubleshooting was done I was in bass heaven for about an hour until I realized it was 2 in the morning.

This build certainly got me going berserk on my bass all over again and that's what I like about it. I don't have a fender P-bass or a J-bass but I am convinced that this pedal sounds even better on fender basses than it does on my Music-Man style bass.

Ginger bass by Runoffgroove by Doron Barness on Mixcloud

The schematic, and pref-board layout which I love so much from Runoffgroove can be found here. It's too bad the guys over there at Runoffgroove have stopped publishing layouts. I really dig their designs and so does anyone I know. I just might print a T-shirt with a "holler" to bring them back to earth.

  

Thy Last Screamer

Landgraff's Tube Screamer Clone

Well, this was about to happen sooner or later. Once I started this blog I knew that one day I will build a Tube Screamer clone or something like it. However, I never, in my life, would have imagined that I would spend so much time choosing the best version for me and I sure never imagined that there were so damn many versions, variants and clones all built around the same basic topology. The original design was developed by S. Tamura in the late 70's for Ibanez and was issued after a few pilot versions as TS-808 in 1979. 

The schematic basically revolves around the operational amplifier which is hooked up with a diode clipping pair on the negative feedback loop. This is the overdrive section which is very common to all Tube Screamer offsprings. When the diodes go into clipping due to a drop in the forward voltage on the diodes, you get a saturated clipping tone. This is what happens when you crank the DRIVE knob. It increases the gain on a resistor hooked up in parallel to the clipping diodes and thus more juice is fed through to clipping. Various designs of clipping pairs can be used like 1N914 or LED pairs. Clipping can be symmetrical or asymmetrical. It means that if you run a sine waveform through the gain stage you get a distorted waveform which looks more like a  rectangular shape. There is also a clever chain of filters designed to get rid of some bass before clipping occurs and then stage.

Below you can find a schematic of the two stages: The clipping stage with its high-pass filter in front, and the post clipping EQ'ing. 

The clipping stage with its high-pass filter in front, and the post clipping EQ'ing with its lo-pass and hi-pass shelving filter.

The filter design is what makes the Tube Screamer cut so well through the mix and it always sound punchy. it's very mid range in terms of equalization. Also the original TS and most of its variants employ an input and output buffers. So, to sum things up the Tube Screamer overdrive style is a very sweet and warm one with plenty of mid-range not a lot of body. The complexity and success of its design made it possible to get a lot of different colors by implementing small changes to the circuit. A lot about the magic within the electronics can be learned from the links below:

http://www.bteaudio.com/articles/TSS/TSS.html

http://www.analogman.com/tshist.htm

Among the endless list of clones and variants you can find: BOSS OD-1, MJM Phantom Overdrive, Landgraff Dynamic Overdive, Green Machine, Little Green Wonder, MAXON 808, Retro Sonic eight o eight, Signa Drive, Maxon OD820, HBE Power Screamer, Toadworks Texas Flood, Visual Sounds Route 66, Xacttone Multi Drive, SBN Lil Screaming Eagle, Pedalworx Tejas, Lovepedal Burst Eternity, Cusack Screamer, Way Huge Green Rhino, Clay Jones OD, Fulltone Fulldrive 2, Love Pedal OD11 and many others, all categorized under the tedious label YATS (Yet Another Tube Screamer).

Scream-a-delic Dynamic Overdrive

After listening to loads of Youtube videos and reading endless reviews and recommendations I built the basic "skeleton" similar to the Runoffgroove "Tube Reamer" and started experimenting with various designs. I ended up really loving the versatility and tone of the Landgraff Dynamic Overdrive (LDO) which became sort of legendary, maybe because it was a boutique and expensive pedal, but maybe because it just sounds fantastic. I don't know. Anyway this baby rocks so well that I ended up giving it to our band's guitarist and he doesn't plan on giving it back to me. Along with the Boss BD-2 and a Wah-wah in front he has the most creamy and sweet sound you can imagine.  

I built the layout using the JRC4558D op-amp and a pair of 2SC1815 trannies for the buffers. A really nice addition by Landgraff is the clipping switch which let's you choose between symmetric LED clipping, asymmetric diode clipping (1N914) and no clipping at all which makes the unit act as a nice mid range booster. I didn't use any ready made layout and just built the entire thing according to the schematic from beginning to end. Got it right the first time...
If you want to imagine the sound of the screamer think of the SRV blues tone and the sweet Gibson sound of R.E.M. or Oasis. That's the sound. Being such a big psychedelia addict I named it "SCREAM-A-DELIC" to stay in context with the original Screamer but to give it some nice Scottish Primal Scream vibe (and yes, I noticed that I miss spelled the "Scream"...ooops).

Until I get my audio clip together, here's a review from the best in the business - the Gearmanndude. He's got a few of those videos featuring the LDO amd it's a killer pedal, even next to some boutique legends like the Zendrive and the original screamers.


Don't think twice. Built the LDO or another YATS, and yeah, it is that good! You can find the Clay Jones schematic with a nice layout here or here.

A Nu Tone clone for the old Mu-Tron III

The Mu-Tron III clone - NU-TONE III

For a very long time I have been interested, mainly, in pedals which gave me sweet fuzz and overdrive crunchy sounds. This is because I use them. It seems pointless to build too many pedals if you don't use them. I did build the wonderful ROG (Runoffgroove) Tri-Vibe and loved it, I did buy reverb and delay pedals and I use them all the time. However, I am always ready to dive into a new sonic adventure if given the proper incentive. Well this time I was approached by a guy who runs a gig-rehearsal room-bar kinda place and he saw our band's pedal arsenal and asked me to build him a pedal which is called Mu-tron III by Musitronics.

Stevie and the Original 1972 Mu-Tron III

This pedal is the sound of funky 70s bass, clavinet, guitar and more. After Stevie Wonder hooked it up to his clavinet and had it do the auto-wah thing for his wah-clavinet everybody from Bootsy Collins on bass to Jerry Garcia on his guitar were wahkin' off their instruments on stage and on albums. It is actually an envelope controlled filter which was made to produce synth sounds from regular instruments. It's quite a unique piece of gear running on 18V and having opto-isolators as the coupling mechanism for the envelope generators. It was built in 1972 by a spin-off company of Guild Guitars who wanted to make a synth for guitars and ended up as Musitronics and built some nice synth-like pedals for a large range of instruments including this crazy auto-wah pedal called the Mu-Tron III. In the 90's Electro-Harmonix used the original circuit to issue their more updated Q-Tron family. 

When I researched it I was super thrilled by the challenge and told him I would make him one. I didn't have a clue where to begin but after a few hours which became days I understood what this legendary pedal was all about and I found the schematics, layouts, manuals and most important a ready-to-solder PCB from JD Sleep at GeneralGuitarGadgets which I love so much.

The next issue was locating all the parts with 2 key components which I didn't find, the opto-isolators. There were a few options how to go that path and I chose to listen to Steve Daniels at SmallBear who recommended the H11F3 Photocouplers which were supposed to be similar to the Original Hamamatsu ones. Other options seemed less appealing to me and sure didn't want to go into building my own couplers with a LED and an LDR hooked up together.

From reading about the circuit design it was also obvious that tuning the unit's frequency response with a single resistor would make the unit less versatile and I decided to add a 10k pot instead. This pot gave me an extra frequency sweep control which made the filter pedal even more versatile and playing with it was like a manual frequency knob on an analog synth filter. Great Fun, check out this audio clip below:

Anyway, while building this incredible pedal as an order to a friend who plays bass, I knew I had to have another one for myself. So...I built a second one.

The GGG PCB all populated and ready for wiring up

Experimenting with the unit prior to the artwork

Planning the Artwork

The finished Mu-tron clone unit - Nu-Tone III

Once again, with a fuzz or an overdrive you could get the Prodigy's Voodoo People synth loop or a lot of really crazy riffs with a hard Electro-Rock feel. Fuzz after the pedal sounds good but it is really best to place it before the pedal that makes the envelope filter shine through.

If you get the PCB you can do it without to much trouble. It would be braver to go at it without a ready-to-solder PCB. Also don't pass on the 9-18V charge pump option, it's a must. One think I am not to certain of was the bypass switch which is accomplished using a FET instead of a normal true bypass configuration. It works, nevertheless.

There are so many settings with this baby and so many options that it blows me away. Subtle or hard, LP, HP, UP and DOWN, it's really the Endless Enigma (if you know what I mean...ELP...), I just wish I would play more music that demands this kind of sound. I usually use it nowadays on bass more but for a Clavinet or a Rhodes style electric piano it would be a killer.

GGG have all the necessary technical info right here. It's off the beaten fuzz track but certainly a worthwhile addition to your fuzz tone arsenal of eccentricities.

So ya thought ya might like to...be a DIY dude?

Basic DIY parts - Boards, resistors, capacitors, semiconductors and wires

Today I figured I'd do something a little different. Instead of bragging about another Fuzz I built and sharing my thoughts, I thought it would be a good point to stop for a minute and share some of the DIYer's daily routine. 

I've been an electronics geek since I was 9 and by the age of 11 I already had more than a few solder iron burns on my hand. I built mostly DIY kits and I was happy. around the age of 20 I started getting into electronic music and musical gadgets. Over the years I've built PAiA kits which came out excellent and have proven to be very useful and great sounding musical tools. It was only 3 years ago or so that I started really getting into guitar DIY pedals and amps. It all started with the Ruby amp by ROG and the Noisy Cricket from Beavis Audio. The amount of blogs, websites, tutorials and general info I found was so overwhelming that there was really no way back. At the time, I had a few commercial pedals like the TubeWorks Real Tube Overdrive, the VOX 847 Wah pedal and the fantastic Ibanez DD7 delay (which was the best birthday present I got from my wife after it was stolen during a gig). After a few fuzz and overdrive pedals I knew I would never buy another commercial grit pedal and the quest for the perfect fuzz circuit began. One thing I must admit is that I always wanted to build a spring reverb effect and have yet to achieve that. I did get myself this year (birthday again) the TC Hall of Fame reverb pedal which is an excellent addition to my ever growing rig.

So let's get down to business....If you're a noobe, a rookie, or just a dude who is trying to make a pedal in the real world, here's a short review of what you will need, and what you will need to know to get the job done. I wouldn't call myself a super experienced veteran, but I did build about 40 pedals and other audio gadgets over the past years and I made a hell of a progress over this period.

My 10 commandments for the DIY beginner:

1. You don't need to be an electronic engineer to build a pedal, but you can't built anything right without having some basic understanding of electronics. You need to know what a resistor is what are capacitors, diodes, transistors, voltage, current, inputs, outputs, switches and potentiometers. All the rest can wait.
2. You have to have soldering skills. Get a solder iron (or gun), watch some tutorials on YouTube and practice a little. It's not rocket science.
3. Listen, learn, read-on....there are so many great websites with helpful information, use it! some of the best out there are:
• http://www.beavisaudio.com/
• http://www.runoffgroove.com/
• http://www.muzique.com/
• http://www.aronnelson.com/gallery/main.php
• https://www.generalguitargadgets.com/
• http://fuzzcentral.ssguitar.com/index.php
• http://www.geofex.com/
• http://www.tonepad.com/
• http://www.sabrotone.com/
• http://circuitworkshop.com/forum/index.php
• http://www.stompthatbox.com/byo.html
• http://www.turretboard.org/
• http://www.freestompboxes.org/
• http://www.diystompboxes.com/smfforum/index.php
• and the list goes on....
4. Decide what do you want to build, what sound do you want to achieve, don't build something you don't need. You don't want to spend money and time on something that you don't need or don't like. Listen to demos and watch videos of the pedals you are going to build. Almost any pedal you can think of has demo clips on the web. The gearmanndude YouTube channel has an incredible amount of pedal demos, so does Proguitarshop. Want some fantastic blogs except this one?
• tagboardeffects.blogspot.com
• revolutiondeux.blogspot.com
• apocalypseaudio.blogspot.com
• there are so many others too...
5. Get all the information you need off the web BEFORE you buy any parts and BEFORE you do any soldering. Make sure you have the right schematic and a verified layout, compare versions and make a list of ALL the parts you need. It's really annoying finding out you need one more 2N5457 and having to wait for it to arrive by mail with your circuit sitting around almost finished. Great sites for buying parts:
• https://www.smallbearelec.com/home.html
• http://www.mammothelectronics.com/
• http://www.fuzzboxworld.com/
• http://www.effectsconnection.com/
• and of course....http://www.ebay.com/  has a lot of great stores.
6. Get yourself a breadboard and make sure you are gonna build something that really works.
7. It's harder to debug a non-working circuit than to build a new one. When you build your circuit make sure you are doing it right. Check and double check and triple check each point and don't move forward until you are sure you are OK. Go slowly and patiently. It will save you time.
8. Nevertheless, there is always some probability for bugs. Bad parts, bad soldering, wrong schematics or just plain human mistakes. Don't loose it and be patient. Never give up on a circuit.
9. Get yourself a simple digital multimeter and build an audio probe. The multimeter can test part values like resistance and capacitance but it is a super important tool for measuring contacts and voltage values. About the audio probe, we'll get to that later, but it's really something which helped me troubleshoot a few circuits. Any help you can get from articles by guys like R.G. Keen, Jack Orman, Doug Hammond, Runoffgroove and Mark Hammer can be extremely useful, but sometimes they  for more experienced DIYers. I built my audio probe according to the dubugging article:
• http://www.diystompboxes.com/pedals/debug.html
10. Last but not least..... Aesthetics is really something you should try to improve over time. It is great to buy good enclosures and to choose nice knobs, but what I really mean is keep your wiring neat and tidy. Shorter wires, better layouts, better enclosure and off-board wiring will make your pedal look better, and more important, it reduces noise, hum and can make your pedal sound better in the end result.

Solder gun, wire cutter, needle nose pliers and some
 solder wire. 

So....putting it down to practice. Say you made your mind on a great fuzz unit which you heard over on YouTube and you think that this pedal can do your tone some justice.

The audio clips on the Runoffgroove website or their older site home-wrecker are a great place to begin.

They give you everything from the clip and review to the schematic and the layout with a part list. The amount of schematics and layouts on the web is enormous and confusing. The websites I refer to on the lists above a great selection of verified schematics and layouts.

A breadboard setup with a bypass switch and i/o sockets

It is always recommended to start with a simple layout. Fuzz and booster pedals are a good place to start. It's good to order more parts than necessary for a specific pedal, over time you will see that you have many parts and can build a circuit from parts you have without having to order anything. For pedals which I wasn't sure about, like germanium fuzzes where the parts need tweaking, I found it very useful to get a breadboard and build a modular setup where I could use the breadboarded layout as a pedal with a switch and jacks so that I could really play with it and tweak it on the board.

Off board wiring parts...the enclosure is missing

Once you have the part list, don't forget to add the necessary parts for the off-board wiring and the enclosure. This means that for every circuit you see on the web you need to add:

• 3PDT stomp switch
• Enclosure (preferably metal)
• Input and output sockets
• 9V DC socket and/or a battery clip
• Knobs
• LED with a resistor
• LED bezel
• Stranded wire

Sometimes these must have parts are more expensive than the circuit itself.

Another thing that I found myself bashing my head about was 'what's the best true bypass switching layout?'

I found many layouts on the web and having tried more than a few I can safely say that I have found the right one for me. The layout below has true bypass switching with LED, DC 9V input with batter clip option. It also has input to ground connection when the pedal is bypassed. There are other options but this is what Analog mike of Analogguru and Zachary of ZVex are using. That's a very safe and sound layout.

My best stompbox True Bypass wiring scheme

An Audio Probe tester

The next thing is troubleshooting a bad circuit. You got everything hooked up, you think you got everything right, you plugged in your guitar, hit your favorite version of E with the pedal bypassed. Then you prayed and pressed the stomp switch but everything went dead. Then you panic....well...Don't panic! These things happen. Maybe you forgot something on the way. Maybe your transistors are busted, maybe you just didn't plug your DC power, but maybe it's something more complicated. 2 things you need: A multimeter and an audio probe. The multimeter can help you probe voltages and shorts anywhere on the circuit but a really simple way to find where your problem is is the audio probe. Just plug the jack to your amp or soundcard and the alligator clip to the circuit ground and then move from the output of the circuit backwards touching with the probe (the end of the cap) on the signal path until you find where the circuit becomes dead. One time I had a bad IC mounted and one time it was a bad solder point. It could be anything. Then the multimeter comes in to finish the job. Another thing is the grounds. Always make sure you got everything grounded right. It's easy to forget.

Drill protection with masking tape

The final stages of building the pedal are mostly aesthetic and artistic. I usually buy the Hammond style enclosures because they are strong and not too expensive. However, other metallic enclosures like chocolate boxes and mini lunchboxes, gum packages and other have proven to be equally nice, cheaper of-course, but naturally, not very sturdy.

When I want to drill the pots, switches and socket holes I learned that it's a shame if the die cast coating gets scratched during the drilling process.

The perfect enclosure

I started covering the enclosure with masking tape and did all the pencil measurements and drilling with the tape protection on. Once you are done drilling and cleaning, you take the tape off and the enclosure remains intact.

Trying to fit everything

In order to get your circuit sitting nicely in the enclosure and have all the off-board wiring all neat and tidy you will have to mount all the off-board parts on the enclosure and only then start wiring the thing up. This way you can measure lengths correctly without having excess wire running around in the housing. On longer wires you don't have to wire up wires on the shortest path but on a longer path so that the wires run inside near the edges of the enclosure and are not crossing diagonally inside. Sometimes there are so many wires that it simply looks a mess. Do the best you can. It's not easy making a pedal look good inside. Shorter wires and well organized wiring layout will help your pedal sound better and will help you troubleshoot problems if they occur in the future. Wires take up a lot of space. If it gets too crowded inside, your board can get messed up if you put pressure on it when you close the lid on the enclosure. Using shrink tubes where you think it is needed will prevent shorts. 

The finished product

So...that's it. Now that everything is working and you have chosen the right colors and played a bit with your pedal and you think you got yourself a keeper, you can commit to the artwork. After you paint the pedal there is no turning back, you won't be able to repaint it for another circuit (Unless you just paint VOL, TONE, GAIN).

For some time I've been looking for perfect colors to paint my enclosures, something which could be strong, opaque and comfortable for doing delicate brush work. What I have come up with is a set of window glass and ceramic paint. Lefranc & Bourgeois have some great ceramic paint, but the black color I found best was GlasArt used for vitrage painting. It says transparent but it is perfectly opaque for pedal painting. Buy a set of black, white, red, blue and yellow (maybe green too) and you can play around with a color palette to create some amazing tones. It is so much fun, if you enjoy creating new tones using various pedals for your guitar, you'll love painting. All the examples on this blog were done using these exact colors with Pure Sable brushes of various sizes. Acetone can be used to clean the brushes and to correct mistakes, but be very careful!!! Acetone can damage the gloss of the die cast coating so don't over do it.

Now go out and start working...be patient...put some thought to it and don't give up if the first one doesn't come out as good as you through it would.

In the end, it's the love you put into those pedals that gives you that satisfaction when you play your guitar and you know that sound is really yours. 

One last warning before I wrap this post up....if you are a guitarist or any sort of musician, don't get caught in the pedal making business to much. It's better to burn out than to fade away....ha ha ....what I mean is - It's always better to play than solder.

Rock On...crew members