Tools, Tones and Toys for Guitarists
Here’s an transistor-ization of the Butler Tube Driver by Jon Patton. Here’s what he had to say about it: I replaced the op amp buffer + inverting drive stage with a MOSFET booster, and replaced the tube stages with with FETs in the normal manner. Note that the design inverts phase, which the original did, … Read more
The Cardinal Trem is a harmonic tremolo designed by Jon Patton and meant to emulate the tremolo effect built into several Fender amps from the early 60s (Twin, Super, Pro, Showman, etc). What makes it harmonic? The audio signal is amplified by the first JFET stage, then split into a high-pass path and a low-pass … Read more
Finishing out Jon Patton week with the Mossy Sloth Fuzz for Fuzz Friday. It’s a pretty unique transistor-based fuzz and uses MOSFETs to create some asymmetrical clipping for some unusual fuzz and distortion sounds. Loads more info can be found here.
Continuing Jon Patton Week with a vibe/tremolo effect called the Blue Warbler. It features envelop control over the LFO and can be built with one or two LDR stages (layout below reflects the 2 stage version). Jon explains it best, so be sure to check out his build doc and demo below. It’ll be a little … Read more
Jon has contributed a lot to the DIY pedal building community and I always learn something new when I layout one of his circuits. So I think we’ll have a Jon Patton week, starting with the Clipper Ship. There’s a good bit of flexibility with this one. Q1 can be pretty much any low gain … Read more
Here’s another design from Jon Patton. It’s a delay based on the popular PT2399, with an always-on preamp. The preamp is designed to have a flat EQ and won’t alter your tone. So the In and Out pads go to the input/output jacks, instead of the switch. You could still wiring this for true-bypass (just … Read more
Here’s a cool design by Jon Patton (seriously though, everything he designs is pretty awesome). He was kind enough to share his work and offer a full circuit explanation over on DIYSB and Madbean’s forum too. Check out the thread here or here for his schematic and other goodies.
Here are Jon Patton’s original Snow Day Overdrive and Madbean’s modified version (Flabulanche). You can find all infos on Brian’s website: http://www.madbeanpedals.com/projects/Flabulanche/Flabulanche_2015.pdf Jon Patton’s video: – 2n5457s are biased around 12V.
Here’s a simple compressor design by Jon Patton (aka midwayfair) that’s good for guitar and bass. In Jon’s words: The Bearhug is a tonally transparent, ultra-quiet, tiny, and easy-to-build compressor. It occupies some middle ground between the ultra-subtle compressors like the Flatline/Afterlife and Orange Squeezer and the super squishy compressors like the Ross. For more … Read more