Tools, Tones and Toys for Guitarists
So there are a few bits missing, but if you are familiar with treble boosters, I’m sure you’ll work it out. Being a small and simple circuit, it’s a good candidate for breadboarding. The filter pot is your standard input blend, probably similar to the values that Steve Williams uses in his Pigdog Competition Special … Read more
The Colorsound Overdriver / Power Boost family went through a few different versions over the years. This layout is for the classic 1971 9V Overdriver version – essentially the 9V successor to the earlier 18V Power Boost, with the same basic three–transistor topology but set up for a standard single-supply pedalboard. It makes a huge, … Read more
Macari’s often release pedals that are minor variations on the same circuit – in this case the “Sakata” Colorsound hybrid one knob fuzz has quite a few value changes compared to the previous hybrid they released, which was closer to a stock fuzz box. Macari’s describe the Sakata as being tuned closer to a MK1.5 I … Read more
The Colorsound Fuzz Box has to be one of my favourite fuzz circuits, due to its simplicity and reliable results. It’s very much a one trick pony, but if you just want a nice thick fuzz, this will to that trick quite well. The original silicon circuit is said to be a Dick Denny design, … Read more
I saw this pop-up today at Macari’s and thought I’d check it out. It’s a silicon fuzz face variant used as the fuzz board in one of the old Colorsound fuzz wahs – which is not completely unlike the Colorsound Fuzz Box one knob fuzz (which I used for the layout). It’s a great sounding, … Read more
Following on from the previous post, this is the D*A*M version of the Colorsound Fuzz Sound. Thread on the D*A*M forum can be found here. Basically take a D*A*M Fuzz Sound, and change the Fuzz pot to an internal trimmer. Unlike the regular Park 2 knob with a large 25u coupling cap between the darlington … Read more
Surprised that I hadn’t done a standard vero layout for this earlier… The Colorsound Jumbo Tone Bender is just a Big Muff missing some diode clipping and the last boost stage (the lack of diodes in the first clipping stage makes up for the lack of boost). They share nothing in common with their predecessors of the … Read more
Not really a Tonebender; it’s really a Big Muff in disguise – minus a couple of diodes and a gain stage. These were built in the 1970s COLORSOUND JUMBO TONEBENDER – VERO LAYOUT COLORSOUND JUMBO TONEBENDER – VIDEO DEMO
I did a point to point layout for this some time ago, which was actually my first post for this blog. Full description via the link above. The Colorsound Tone Bender Distortion is more distortion than bender – there are zero similarities between a MKI, MKII or MKIII bender and this circuit. COLORSOUND TONE BENDER DISTORTION – … Read more
All the details are listed in the previous post – this is a 0.15″ version of the yellow Colorsound Hybrid Tone Bender. I did the previous layout on standard size vero, and after using 0.15″ vero and tag board on a lot of builds recently, it just seems very tiny now, so I did … Read more