Tools, Tones and Toys for Guitarists
The humble Proco Rat – a staple of distortion throughout the 80s, and then later rediscovered by people that couldn’t afford expensive pedals or just liked the sound. By the way, I refuse to acknowledge the Rat as a fuzz pedal. Others may, but not me… Excellent analysis on Electrosmash if you have somehow missed it – link here The … Read more
This is a simplified version of a Pete Cornish ST-2 (based on the Colorsound Overdriver). I did the full layout, and it it kind of large, and double buffers are not for everyone. So no buffers, and the power supply filtering is simpler. I’m sure the proper Pete Cornish version is probably better, but if you prefer something smaller and simpler, … Read more
The Pete Cornish SS-3 is one of my favourite overdrives – so I thought I might make another one with a different layout and buffer. Changes Swapped the Cornish buffer for a standard opamp based buffer Ran the reference voltage through the spare opamp Used a quad opamp instead of 2 x single op amps … Read more
The MXR M-103 Blue Box is a sub-octave fuzz (two octaves down). It’s not a clean sub-octave either, pretty dirty really, well it’s a fuzz… kind of synthy on some settings. Might want to check how many 56k resistors you have before starting this. MXR BLUE BOX – VERO LAYOUT BLUE BOX OCTAVE MOD Same … Read more
This is a modded Benson Preamp by Dylan159 on Freestompboxes. Dylan has taken the original and simplified it but has retained the overall character. Quite a detailed explanation via the link above, including a schematic, LTSPICE model traces, audio and his vero layout. What a solid effort. For me, this is useful, as it has a standard … Read more
This is in response to a question I saw that asked on Facebook regarding reducing the minimum amount of fuzz available on a Tone Bender MKIII / MKIV. With the fuzz pot at full, there’s almost no resistance between the first stage and Q3. The fuzz pot acts as a variable resistor, so even at … Read more
A simple mod to provide more flexibility for the timbre range of the Buzzaround. One side of the timbre control is 15khz high-pass filter, which is very high. The useful range of the timbre sweep is rather limited as a result of this, and there’s also a bit of volume loss that comes with this. Some D*A*M … Read more
This is a handy little mod for the Univox Super Fuzz – especially for those who always leave the tone switch on the notch setting. Instead of a tone switch, there’s a pot from the 100n capacitor to ground in the bridged-t notch filter, so the amount of notch can be dialled in. If you really want … Read more
This is a bare-bones Roland BeeBaa. I built the full version and found that all I really used was the scooped fuzz sound – so this is just that. Nothing but unadulterated vintage Japanese fuzz…. I think this works best with low-gain transistors. I made a version using weird KT315 Soviet BCE transistors, and it sounds mean. … Read more
