Death by Audio Soundwave Breakdown 2

DBA Soundwave Breakdown v2 f99cbb6c29ad

Last week for Fuzz Friday I posted the early version of the Soundwave Breakdown from Death by Audio. Here’s the newer version of DBA’s Soundwave Breakdown with 6 transistors and another external control. On earlier examples of this revision the Sensitivity pot is an internal trimmer, but the newest version seems to have moved it … Read more

Transistor Tester

Transistor Tester dc7817e0610a

Ever hear about “leaky” germanium transistor and wonder how to measure that? Well, here’s a little utility board that allows you to test germanium transistors. It’s based on this article by R. G. Keen, which you should definitely read. It explains pretty much everything going on in this process. I’ve included a switch to allow … Read more

Lovepedal Kalamazoo

Lovepedal Kalamazoo 578741dde4f9

Here’s another overdrive from Lovepedal, the Kalamazoo. Somewhat similar to the Timmy/OD11 but with different tone controls. D5 on originals is a 1N914/4148 (they’re pretty much the same diode), but a 1N5817 or even a 4001 would probably bet better (it’s for polarity protection). Also, I’ve included pads for the capacitor labeled “Cx” on the … Read more

Death by Audio Soundwave Breakdown 1

DBA Soundwave Breakdown v1 6714ef7b95ae

Happy Fuzz Friday, everybody. Ranjam over on FSB traced an early DBA Soundwave Breakdown (serial number 4) which it’s different than the current model. The unit he traced didn’t have the trimmers later units did. Don’t know the original value of those trimmers, but 50-100k is a good starting point. Those trimmers control the input … Read more

Run Off Groove UBE Screamer

ROG UBE Screamer 517af73a6b14

Apparently it’s Tube Screamer week. This is Run Off Groove’s adaption of the classic overdrive to work around a CD4049UBE CMOS chip. More info, schematic and sound clip here. As you can see in the schematic, there’s a resistor (RX) where different values will work for different guitar pickup types: 100k for single coils, 220k … Read more