Tools, Tones and Toys for Guitarists
Here’s one of Bajaman’s non-amp emulating circuits, the Optical Limiter. It’s based on the Demeter Compulator, but is not a compressor but a limiter. What’s the difference? The ratio is the main difference between a compressor and a limiter. A compressor has a low ratio that turns down SOME of the volume when it goes above the threshold. A limiter has a … Read more
The Pantheon is Brian Wampler’s take on the classic Bluesbreaker circuit. It adds some of the mods from the King of Tone as well as a Baxendall tone stack for the Bass control (the would be treble control of the Baxendall is fixed) and a gain switch to set different min/max settings of the Drive … Read more
Got a request for this one, and it’s an interesting Big Muff variant. If you’re a fan of Muse you’re probably already familiar with this one. There’s a germanium input stage followed by a fairly standard Big Muff circuit. Here’s the schematic for reference. It would be a tight squeeze in a 1590B even if you … Read more
Here’s an interesting and fairly simple noise gate circuit sent to me by Stanik Nupel from a Polish electronics book. Schematic and Stanik’s original layout can be found here. The switch isn’t in his original layout, so it may not be all that necessary. It’ll be a tight squeeze in a 1590B, but should fit … Read more
This one just got traced over on FSB. Apparently the heaviest of Bjorn’s Honey designs. Here’s the schematic for reference. Note: In the schematic the source and drain on Q1-2 are reversed from the way they are normally oriented, but I recently learned JFETs are generally symmetrical and will work either way. The original is built … Read more
Got a request for this one. It’s apparently a modified Bogner Ecstasy Red, which is a JFET adaption of the Red channel on the Bogner Ecstasy amp. Since it uses 2 footswitches, I went ahead and designed the board for a 1590BB with all 6 pots board mounted. The boost switch uses one side of … Read more
Stumbled across this one on FSB and thought it looked cool. It was designed by JD Barbato and is kind of a mashup between a Tone Bender MkII and a MkIII, with a BMP-style tonestack, with a switch changing the cap values in said tonestack. You can build it with all germanium transistors or use … Read more
The Incandenza Bypass is a simple, low parts count, relay-based true bypass circuit designed by Steve Demedash. It uses a normally open momentary SPST footswitch triggering a simple 555-based flip flop circuit, triggering a non-latching DPDT footswitch. The layout below reflects the pinout of the either the Takamisawa NA5W-K or Omron G6S-2 relays. These are … Read more
This is (or was now I guess) one of the few Run Off Groove designs I haven’t laid out. It’s not a small circuit and I ended up laying it out for a 1590BB so the pots can be board mounted (but it will fit in a smaller enclosure if wire them off board). I … Read more