Tools, Tones and Toys for Guitarists
The Blues Breaker was designed to emulate the vintage 2×12 Marshall combo, and was introduced by Marshall in 1991. Great at pushing a clean amp into breakup and sounds great with single coils. There has since been a Bluesbreaker II, which many claim to be inferior to the original. This layout is for the original … Read more
Here’s a simple one that should fit nicely in a 1590a. EQD’s take on the Electra Distortion circuit. Instead of having a pot coming off the end of the circuit, the volume is controlled by a pot coming off the emitter of the 2N3904. It’s really more of a gain control than volume and if … Read more
Been meaning to do this one for a while. One of the most classic effects ever, the Tube Screamer has been used by just about everybody. This layout is for the original TS808 circuit, but you can also build the TS9 on it as well. Just swap the 100Ω resistor coming off the emitter of … Read more
Almost identical to the BearFoot BlueBerry Bass Overdrive, this version is tuned for guitar. A medium drive apparently inspired by old Supro amps, it delivers warm overdrive that’s very sensitive to your pick attack.
Here’s a good, subtle sounding compressor. It uses a LDR and LED to control the limiting done by the effect. You can go the home-brew route and put a LDR and LED in some shrink tubing or there should be enough space to use a VTL5C2 or a NSL-32 photocoupler. Diodes I’ve listed as 1N34s … Read more
The Heart Throb is a Schaller Tremolo circuit modified by MarkM, and uses pretty standard parts that you probably have kicking around in your parts drawer(s). The SPDT switch controls the rate. I’ve added polarity protection and power filtering. The LED not only is an on/off indicator, but will pulse to the rate of the … Read more
Here’s the mighty SolaSound Tone Bender Mk.II shrunk down to fit in a 1590a. I laid it out for NPN transistor, as I really wouldn’t want to try and squeeze a charge pump in a 1590a along side the effect board. Like the larger layout I posted last year, you could build the Marshall SupaFuzz … Read more
I found this layout going through an old folder on my computer. Pretty simple IC-based dirt circuit and will fit in 1590a. Here’s a sound sample.
This is a pretty cool distortion effect from Seattle based designer Devi Ever. In her own words: The Hyperion is everything the Big Muff wishes it could be. It can cut through in a loud, live, band setting. It has a gorgeous sustain that full of harmonically rich tonal characteristics that doesn’t require much tweaking … Read more
I know, this is the 3rd different BMP layout I’ve done, but this is the one I’m the most happy with. It will easily fit in a 1590B, it has board mounted pots, and said pots aren’t all in one row across the top. As with the other Big Muff layouts, you can build pretty … Read more