Tools, Tones and Toys for Guitarists
I’ve had a couple of questions about these recently, and out of curiosity I decided to take a closer look. In 2024, Sola Sound released a few versions of a hybrid MKI, built by Dave Main of D*A*M. So what is it? It’s essentially a standard MKI circuit, but with the first two germanium transistors … 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 D*A*M Drag n Fly DF-05 is a hybrid fuzz pedal that combines silicon and germanium transistors, drawing inspiration from the classic Fuzz Face design. What sets it apart is its unique filter control, located at the input of the circuit. This control blends the input signal between a 10uF and a 4n7 capacitor, offering … Read more
This the D*A*M Dragonfly DF-06, which is somewhat confusingly not the same circuit as the D*A*M Drag n Fly. They’re both in the Fuzz Face family, but they each approach the tone control differently. The Drag n Fly does the tone shaping up front, while the Dragonfly does it at the end of the circuit, … 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
This is a slightly modded Interfax Harmonic Percolator that I made today. It’s an odd little circuit – it can run from clean, a bit overdriven, then into distortion, and finally to overly compressed fuzz madness. The range of sounds are so broad, it’s almost worth setting it up as a dual pedal (which I … Read more
Similar to the previous Zonk Machine, this has a MKI switch for a larger input cap. Have had this on the breadboard recently, and decided to jump to a vintage-style veroboard. There are of course more differences between a MKI Tone Bender and a Zonk than just an input cap, but for convenience’s sake, … Read more
Yet to build this myself, I quite like the idea behind this – I am partial to anything with bass / mid/high controls for guitar and a germanium transistor. Bonus points for also including a discrete op-amp, which I’ve been playing with lately. Before I looked at the schematic for this, I was playing around with modding a Boss Blues … Read more
This is a slightly different hybrid MKII than I have previously seen – this is a Sola Sound MKII built by D*A*M, referred to as the Black Fish Skin version by Macari’s Music. The PNP Silicon transistor is a PNP version of a BC109 / BC108. I couldn’t see the value of one resistor on the photos, so a safe … Read more
I know one could make the three different effects and box them together, but I thought I might do a layout with them all on one board. EARTHQUAKER DEVICES HOOF REAPER – VERO LAYOUT REAPER VIDEO DEMO