Tools, Tones and Toys for Guitarists
Nick Greer is better known for his amplifiers than he is for his FX, he has produced a few that do interest people though. Luckily the forum folk over at freestompboxes have taken them apart and had a little look. Firstly here’s a description of the Ghetto Stomp from the Nick Greer site: “Three knobs … Read more
Here’s the Lovepedal Black Magic (the photo shows a pedal board with the Black Magic in the top right corner). There is only sparse information on these around on the internet but from what I’ve managed to cobble together it was a pretty old design that was an attempt to get some Eddie Van Halen … Read more
After a thread on Freestompboxes, I thought it would be interesting to try out a few layouts using inline opamps and see how they compare in board size. Tayda sell the NJM4558 which would be perfect for a lot of these effects and so I thought it would be good to see how the layout … Read more
And the other version with symmetrical clipping and slight component value variation. So this is the bufferless Tubescreamer:
Lovepedal’s bufferless Tubescreamer with asymmetrical clipping. Actually I think that makes it a bufferless Boss SD1
Update: aegert on FSB has experimented with the circuit and has found that putting a low value cap like 820pf between pins 1 and 2 of the opamp really improved the pedal. He also suggests that a 500K log pot is much better for the Gain control, so give that a go. Update 2: daz … Read more
Soulsonic makes some cool effects. The Hunny Bunny is one of the best. He’s released a schematic on the freestompboxes.org forum. First here’s the description from his site: “The Hunny Bunny is what I consider to be my first truly original design overdrive. The basic idea was to get away from the generic “Tube Screamer” … Read more
Pete Cornish has been at the helm of the stompbox production queue with clientele ranginf from Lou Reed to Noel Gallagher and David Gilmour of Pink Floyd. The SS-2 is now discontinued and has been replaced with the SS-3. However the SS-2 remains a solid favourite and it looks like it’s circuit secret is out … Read more
Joyo (Which have been rebranded Harley Bensonpedals are all the rage around the Boutique scene at the moment. It’s common knowledge that the Freakish Blues Alpha Drive is just a repainted Joyo Ultimate Drive. However, the Ultimate Drive is just a clone of the Fulltone OCD (Which itself is a close copy of the Voodoo … Read more
Get your big boxes out for this 5 knobber! :o) Although having said that it is only 21 columns wide and so will fit into a 1590B if you’re feeling adventurous (and you’re more precise with your measurements than I am)