Tools, Tones and Toys for Guitarists
Got a request for a PCB to make wiring up 3PDT footswitches a little less messy. There seems to be about a dozen ways to actually wire up an effect with a 3PDT, but I went with this wiring scheme drawn up by Bumblebee over on DIYStompboxes as it’s fairly neat and efficient. The effect … Read more
This is the silicon version of the GB-80. The darlington pair of transistors in the GB-80 aren’t needed as silicon transistors have enough gain, and the rest of the circuit has just been tweaked for the silicon transistors. One problem people seemed to have cloning this circuit over on FSB was biasing the transistors properly. … Read more
Here’s the germanium version of D*A*M’s GreaseBox fuzz. It’s based on the Tone Bender Mk. III but without the tone control. Q1 and 2 form a darlington pair to amplify the signal, and Q3 provides the fuzziness. The original units are positive ground effects and use PNP germanium transistors. That is reflected in the perf … Read more
Got a request for the EQD Bit Commander, and while there doesn’t seem to be a schematic for it, my search for one lead me to this effect. It’s no Bit Commander, but it does do the synth-y octave down thing. The original Robot Devil has the octave switch (which allows you to switch between … Read more
Needed to do a simple circuit after all those involved 6 onboard pots layouts. They’re exhausting 😉 This is Nick Greer’s take on the classic Electra Distortion, but with one simple twist: the Blend control allows you to blend in the clipping stage. Expect some volume loss with the diodes blended into the signal, but … Read more
This was a request that came in from Cody from the They Remained Silent blog. It’s an emulator of the Laney Super Group 100 watt head designed by Heuller Pinson (MallerMB). I would assume you should bias the JFETs to ~4.5v then adjust from there. Don’t have a ton of info on this other than … Read more
The Musket Fuzz is a variation of the classic Big Muff. Based on a Black Russian version, the Musket adds a modified LPB-1 booster (the “Pre” section) that pushes the standard BMP circuit. The “Focus” control allows you to pan between 2 different capacitors at the input of the first stage of the BMP. The … Read more
Here’s a bass fuzz designed by Charlie Barth from Moosapotamus.net based on the fuzz section of the classic Acoustic 360 bass preamp. It uses a mix of silicon and germanium transistors. I’ve made the layout to reflect the combination of transistors specified in Charlie’s schematic, but socket and experiment. This layout should fit in a … Read more
The Talons is a great sounding overdrive pedal and is EQD’s take on the Marshall Guv’nor. FSB member Zedsnotdead traced it and requested a layout with board-mounted 9mm pots to fit in a 1590B. As per usual, the pots should be mounted on the solder-side of the board. Watch out for the EQ pots as … Read more
The White Light is based on the MXR Distortion +/DOD 250 circuit, but with some modernization and improvements. There’s an added tone control called “Weight” and the toggle switch adds compression by adding an extra germanium clipping stage. The board is laid out for solder-side mounted right angle PCB pots or you could use long … Read more