Tools, Tones and Toys for Guitarists
Here is an old forgotten old cat… It is basically a Controfuzz followed by three seperate channels for the Treble, Bass and Mid controls. The fuzz can be bypassed so it can serve as an EQ pedal only as well. Some improvements had to be done to make it more practical. 1. An onboard voltage … Read more
The Gretsch Expandafuzz is a bit of an odd-ball guitar effect from the late sixties / early seventies. Not much out there on these in terms of information and video demos. First oddity: Apart from having a switch and a knob for almost everything, the one switch it doesn’t have is for bypassing the entire effect – it’s … Read more
The Gretsch Controfuzz is yet another variation on the Distortion + the key point of difference this time is the clean blend, which makes this a little different than the rest. This layout does include a mod that increases the 10k distortion control to 100k, as 10k seems to be too small to be workable with … Read more
OK, so this one is wide even by my standards – but it will still fit in a 150BB in landscape format. I could have made it a bit smaller, but once you get past a certain width, why hold back is my theory. The Gretsch Play Boy Harmon Booster was one of my early … Read more
Here’s a really unique overdrive from the Italian manufacturer Jen from the late 70s. Think Tube Screamer meets Big Muff. It sort of reminds me of a DBA design (only more stable and not as over the top) with a whole mess of transistor stages pushing a BMP style tone stack. Originals used BC318c transistors, but others … Read more
For Fuzz Friday I give you the ControFuzz from Gretsch. Originals are pretty rare and it’s an fairly unique design based around a single 4558 chip. I found a build report from LucifersTrip over on DIYSB, and he suggested a slight mod to the Distortion control that improves the circuit, so the layout below is … Read more
Now get your irons out and build it. Place your favourite fuzz in front of it and get ready for some psychedelic brain melting action. The circuit is the same in both, Jen HF Modulator and Gretsch Playboy. For this layout, i’ve once again swapped the transistor pinout to match your everyday devices. Original has … Read more
Thought some might want to clone this… 🙂 — *Note: There are a few schematics around. One has B10K pot for “Boost” and other A100K. I put in B100K as that pot due to discussion below.. 100K should make it a bit louder, and linear taper should make the sweep feel, well, louder. But use … Read more
