Tools, Tones and Toys for Guitarists
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
Jen was an Italian manufacturer in the 60s and 70s that produced their own line of effects in addition to OEM stuff for other brands like Gretsch and Vox. This fuzz effect is essentially a Fuzz Face with an emitter follower up front and clipping diodes on the output. It produces a treble-heavy fuzz with … Read more
Jen was an Italian electronics company that produced a lot of OEM stuff for other companies (Vox, Gretsch, etc.) as well as marketing their own line of effects. For instance, the HF Modulator was the same effect as the Gretsch Playboy. This effect is a ring modulator and sounds fantastic with a fuzz pushing it. … Read more
Not sure what to call this. It has “Booster” written on the original unit, but still i think it’s rather closer to an overdrive than a booster. It’s definitely not a fuzz. Either way, it does sound pretty nice in the demos. There are other layouts for this circuit around the internets, but i thought … 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
Pretty close to the earlier version of Jen Fuzz, and i may have promised not to do Fuzz Faces nor Benders, but here i go again… Seems to be a classic – so some of you might want to clone this one to the specs too.
It seems that not all of the sixties fuzzes were verbatim tonebenders. There’s not that much difference blueprintwise, but still noticeable difference. Some might want to clone this too… Geiri modded his build a bit to get its sound closer to his preferences. Some of you might want to try these mods out as well. … Read more