Tools, Tones and Toys for Guitarists
Here’s an early design from Freppo from Parasit Studio. It’s a punky overdrive/distortion transistor-based circuit. Here’s the schematic for reference. This was my first attempt at making my own overdrive from what I had learnt by building and modding other circuits. I had done a few heavily modded ones before, but nothing really original. I … Read more
Got a request for this one. It’s a barely modified Tube Screamer with a clipping switch to go between silicon and red LEDs. The switch is a SPDT on/off/on by the way. Gearmandude really seems to like it.
Here’s the Walrus Audio Mayflower, which is essentially a hybrid between the Tube Screamer and the Timmy (which has its roots in the TS already). Originals use a second dual opamp for buffering the voltage divider, which in this instance seems to just be unnecessary, so I’ve omitted that.
Here’s a Menatone design that emulates a Marshall JCM800. Like many Menatone circuits, the King of the Britains has had several iterations over the years. For this layout I went with the 6-knob version (and is essentially the same as the Electrictabs JCM800 emulator). I’ve laid it out specifically for a 125B enclosure with all … Read more
I feel like in the past few months I’ve done a ton Tube Screamer variants. Well here’s another one, but one of the more interesting ones I’ve seen. Bjorn designed this one for Mad Professor and utilizes a dual-gang pot for the Body control that affects both the treble and bass response. The IC was … Read more
Here’s one of the earliest Catalinbread designs, the Supercharged Overdrive. It’s a pretty unique circuit with the Contour control adding in more distortion and saturation from the CD4007 stage. Laid out for board mounted pots and will fit quite nicely in a 1590B. Schematic here for reference.
This is a verified layout of the Grey Version with an added Bass Boost switch borrowed from V.2 It’s basically 2 modified well known circuits in series (TubeScreamer & Shredmaster). There are 2 versions: – a true bypass version were you wire two separate 3PDT footswitches in series. – the original Visual Sound version which … Read more
For Fuzz Friday here’s an really interesting circuit from Durham that’s both an overdrive and a fuzz. As the name implies helps you get some Neil Young tones, but does a lot more than that. The input stage features soft clipping in the feedback loop of an opamp, much like a Tube Screamer. The 2nd … Read more
Here’s HAO’s take on the Distortion +/250 Preamp circuit. It uses LED clipping and features a Brilliance switch for normal, bright, and warm settings. A TL072 dual opamp is used, but on the original, only one side is used and the other is left unconnected. In this layout, I used the unused opamp for the voltage … 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