Tools, Tones and Toys for Guitarists
There are a lot of versions and subversions of the Big Muff. Many consider the Violet Ram’s Head to be the best, though many consider the Triangle, or IC, or Green Russian, etc. the best. YMMV This one has the pots hard mounted to the board, though depending on the enclosure you use, it may … Read more
Since I did the Blower Box yesterday, and it’s essentially a RAT, I figured it wouldn’t take too much effort to convert that layout to the original. So here’s the original ’86 RAT.
Here’s a pretty cool bass distortion based on the RAT. The normal filter section on a RAT is replaced with a passive baxandall network. It was traced by FSB member p.eat and the schematic I based this layout from was drawn by johnk.
Here’s the grey spec DOD Overdrive 250 that fits in a 1590a enclosure. You could also build a yellow spec 250 or the MXR Distortion + with this layout. Just compare the schematics and value swaps.
Thought i’d post this here too in case someone wants to try it out. There’s an old development thread on FSB for this AC30 emulation circuit. There are number of schematic versions with slight differences, but the basics are the same for all of them. It is a nice high gainer with some noise content, … Read more
Many associate this pedal with the fuzz tone for “Spirit in the Sky” by Prodigal Son, though I’m fairly sure that theory has been debunked. At any rate, it’s a great sounding fuzz, and should be a fairly easy build.
MOD Kits has several cool effects kits that are point-to-point using tag strips. The only downside to those is they can take up a lot of space in an enclosure. Here’s one of their newest circuits, The Aggressor. It’s a high gain distortion effect. Here’s a sound demo from their site.
This is one of the many variations of the old Electra Distortion. Sounds like a cranked Tweed 5E3 amp. The original Lovepedal Woodrow has just a volume knob, but it’s easy (and useful) to add a gain control. If you just want one knob, connect Gain 3 to Gain 2.
The classic ’70s overdrive by MXR, and is essentially the same as the DOD 250 and Ross Distortion. I designed the layout to have onboard pots, to alleviate some offboard wiring. It also has the LED resistor on the board, again to reduce offboard wiring a bit. It’ll fit perfectly in a 1590B enclosure. Might … Read more
There’s very little point in building a 1:1 clone, as you can score the original unit for peanuts as used. Possibly even cheaper than what the parts alone would cost you to build one. But instead of going through a painful bypass operation on a Boss box and having your way with the circuit, you … Read more