Tools, Tones and Toys for Guitarists
Well as usual just finished a round of exams, so it’s time to start posting the layouts I did when I was taking study breaks. This time I’m going to space them out so there’s not a sudden flood. First up the 18v Colorsound Power Boost. Same topography as the Colorsound Overdriver, but ran at … Read more
Here’s another Wampler take on the JFET mu-amp design. This one adds a op amp stage at the output and features a Big Muff-style tone stack. This one’s pretty versatile and a great sounding distortion. Ian sent me his perf layout of this one and I refined it a bit for what you see below, … Read more
Apparently mimicing Mesa MKIV head’s distortion. Hadn’t seen this type of distortion control in a pedal before, so i thought this might be a nice addition. Has nice amount of gain and there’s room for tweaking. Update 12.9.2017 – Don’t know what was going on in my head with the original layout revision. It had … Read more
“Unlike traditional overdrive stomp boxes, the VH4 Pedal is a true preamp which delivers an authentic representation of its namesake – real Diezel tone – not emulated, not modeled, but sincerely reproduced. The entire signal architecture is faithful to the original: Bass, Mid, Treble and variable Deep and Presence controls allow you to tailor the … Read more
By popular demand, here’s the BE-OD from Friedman, one of the best Plexi in a box pedals around. Well, not Plexi really. It’s designed to emulate the Friedman Brown Eye tube amp head. Laid this one out for board mounted pots, and it will fit easily in a 1590BB. More info can be found on … Read more
Unrelated to the Angry Charlie circuit, the Charlie Brown emulates the brown sound of a JTM45 amp and is a variation on the zVex Box of Rock without the boost section. The input stage is an AMZ Mosfet Booster (replacing the SHO input stage of the Box of Rock to avoid crackle in the gain … Read more
Laying out Big Muff variations never gets old for me. This one uses germanium transistors in the two clipping stages (and predates the EQD Hoof which also uses germanium transistors) along with schottky diodes (1N6263s). Q4 is a FS25444, but the usual BMP transistor suspects will work as well (2N5088, MPSA18, BC549C, etc). Other than … Read more
I’ve wanted to draw this one up for a while. It’s a fantastic clone/variation of the Boss DS-1 Distortion. I had one for a while and loved it, but ended up selling it to fund some other stuff. But I’m definitely adding this one to the pile. You can sub a TL072 or JRC4558 in … Read more
I’ve gotten a few requests to redo the MI Audio Crunch Box with board mounted pots. How is that relevant to the Angry Charlie you ask? Well, it’s the same circuit. JHS added a cap in parallel with the existing cap coming off the Presence control to ground which tames some of the highs. So … Read more
