Tools, Tones and Toys for Guitarists
Part of the last request included a cab simulator to run the headphone amp through. The ROG Condor is a great cab sim and has a fairly low parts count. It uses a JFET amplifier at the input, boosting the signal to drive the following 3 filters (Bridged-T notch filter, High-pass filter, and Low-pass filter). … Read more
Got a request for a headphone amp, “for those of us who hit their peak inspiration when everyone’s asleep.” Being guilty myself of waking up my 1 year old son with a Peavey Classic 50 with the volume only at 2, I thought this was an excellent idea. So here’s ROG’s Ruby–a 386-based amplifier that can … Read more
The input caps on some old circuits like the Fuzz Face, Tone Bender, or Rangemaster are ripe for variation. Here’s a board that will allow you to switch between 6 different capacitors of your choice. You could also use this for a Gibson Varitone-like switch on a guitar. As with the Rotary Clipping Switch layout, … Read more
Ever want to have as many clipping options as possible on a distortion or overdrive pedal? Here’s a way to add up to 6 different combinations of diodes, LEDs or Mosfets with a 6-way rotary switch. Here’s the break down on the different diode layouts by switch position: Standard 2 diode orientation Asymmetrical diode orientation … Read more
The Vox Treble Booster was a simple silicon treble boost effect that plugged straight into an amp’s input jack. It allowed the user a boost in high frequencies for lead work. I laid this one out to use as a built in effect on a guitar (hence the lack of a power filtering cap and … Read more
The JHS Morning Glory is a modified Blues Breaker overdrive, but with an added JFET output buffer to increase the volume. The original Marshall circuits barely made it above unity with the volume maxed (see the video below), so the output buffer is a good improvement over the original. There’s also a high cut switch … Read more
Here’s another one of Nick Greer’s offerings. Like Sean over at Lovepedal, he seems to be getting a lot of mileage out of the Electra circuit. I’ve laid this out for on-board pots with the board mounted vertically like this: Photo by Bob Scott/negatron.org I saw on the Greer Amps website that a special version … Read more
While we’re on the subject of the Companion Fuzz, here’s an adaption by British pedal company Fredric Effects. It replaces the fixed tone stack of the original FY-2 with a Big Muff tone stack, and adds a LPB-1 booster after the volume pot to increase the volume.
The epitome of buzzsaw fuzz tones, the Shin Ei Companion Fuzz has become a highly sought after fuzz box. The one drawback to the FY-2 is the tone stack between the Fuzz and Volume controls. Besides not being controllable, it drops the volume of the effect below unity. I’ve drawn up a stock layout, as … Read more
I came across the schematic for this while looking through RunOffGroove.com. It’s an interesting mashup of Tim Escobedo’s Idiot Wah and the LFO section from the EA Tremolo to produce a faux phaser effect, and apparently works very well at higher speeds.