Tools, Tones and Toys for Guitarists
Here’s a new one from Catalinbread for #fuzzfriday. The Katzenkönig–the cat king for those of you who don’t sprechen sie Deutsch–is a silicon tonebender-type fuzz with some RAT features thrown in. Catalinbread was kind enough to publish the schematic in the manual for this effect. Pots can all be board mounted using right angle PCB … Read more
Here’s the Lovepedal Englishman. It’s claimed to sound like a cranked Vox (either AC15 or AC30 depending on which clipping diodes are selected). Like many of Lovepedal’s offerings, this circuit is built around a single transistor. Unlike many of Lovepedal’s offerings, it’s not based off the Electra Distortion. Instead, it draws from the EHX LPB-1 … Read more
Here’s a cool EQ/booster from Bjorn Juhl. If pushed hard, it will break up much like a tube EQ would, and adds warmth and clarity to your tone. It uses 2 JFETs and a James style tone stack.
Here’s a cool overdrive circuit designed by Martin from SoulSonic FX. It’s said to be a “Klon Killer,” so if you’ve been disappointed by that circuit, give this one a go. Signal goes through a buffer then is split between clean out put and the rest of the effect. So not a true-bypass effect, but … Read more
Here’s a unique little circuit from Devi. Plenty of gain on tap to go from just a boost, to an overdrive, to fuzzy the more your turn up the volume control. The Pregain control acts more like a tone control, panning between 2 capacitors. The first transistor stage is kind of like an Electra Distortion, … Read more
For #fuzzfriday, here’s the Fulltone 70 fuzz. Like the Fulltone 69, the 70 is a tweaked Fuzz Face circuit, following the silicon version. Like the original silicon Fuzz Face it uses BC108 transistors, though others can be used. Q2 should be higher gain than Q1. One of the nice things about the 70 is the … Read more
Here’s another great circuit by Bjorn (who also designs all the Mad Professor stuff). It’s an optical compressor that’s very similar to the Mad Professor Forrest Green Compressor. It’s not too heavy handed, and is, as Bjorn has said, “The compressor for people who hate compressors.”
Here’s another circuit I ran across will going through the Free Information Society site. It’s designed by Jamie Heilman and seems to be like if a Distortion + and a germanium fuzz had a baby. The first stage uses a single op-amp (NE5534 in the original, but others could be used–TL071, LM741, etc) that pushes … Read more
Just wanted to give you guys a heads up: If I don’t post as frequently as I usually do, or don’t respond to comments, it’s not because I don’t love you guys anymore. 😉 My wife and I just had our second son today and I will probably be continually exhausted for the foreseeable future. … Read more
Here is the ColorSound Bass Fuzz for today’s #fuzzfriday post. It’s pretty much an amputated Big Muff. It’s been tuned for bass guitar and has the gain recovery stage removed (for simplicity I suppose… that and the BMP can be just excessively loud). The first gain stage also doesn’t have the typical diodes a normal … Read more