Tools, Tones and Toys for Guitarists
Happy Fuzz Friday, all! Recently I got a request for the new EQD Hizumitas. Found a schematic for it over on FSB and it’s just a BMP. The values are tweaked, but the topology is the exact same as a standard Muff. If you’ve hung around here for really any length of time you know … Read more
Happy Fuzz Friday everyone! Got a request for this one put forth on FSB. It’s based on the ThroBak sTone Bender, which itself is just a straight clone of the Tone Bender Mk II Professional. The layout is setup for positive ground and PNP transistors. You can use a voltage inverter daughter board or flip any polarized … Read more
Haven’t done a tremolo in a while, so let’s remedy that with the original 4-transistor Colorsound Tremolo (the re-issue is the 3-transistor version). Originals used 2SC945 transistors (BCE pinout), but I’ve laid this out for more common NPN transistors with CBE pinout. You might want to use a C100k pot for the Speed control. Here’s … Read more
Hadn’t done a wah in a while and thought I’d do project where you can build several old school wah circuits on the same board. Many of the early wahs back in the late 60s were based on the original Thomas Organ CryBaby, and as a result many of them follow the same topology with … Read more
I haven’t made a detailed project in a while, so for Fuzz Friday here’s the One-Knobber. It’s based on the old Dr. Tony Balls stripboard layout that covered the ColorSound One-Knob, D*A*M Meathead and Dark Meathead, and a one-knob adaptation of the ’66 Vox ToneBender, and I’ve added the Ritual fuzz by Black Arts Toneworks. … Read more
For #FuzzFriday I give you the SolaSound ToneBender Mk III. The Mark III was a smoother and less aggressive follow up to the famous Mk II Professional. SolaSound built it for several other companies–Vox, RotoSound, Park, etc. There are plenty of layouts for this classic fuzz out there already (there’s already 2 on this blog), … Read more
I was trolling Google Images the other night looking for schematics and I stumbled across this. I think the only thing this reissue has in common with an original is the enclosure and graphics. It uses a single opamp with soft clipping and a Big Muff-style tone stack. If you use 9mm pots you could … Read more
Here is the ColorSound Bass Fuzz for today’s #fuzzfriday post. It’s pretty much an amputated Big Muff. It’s been tuned for bass guitar and has the gain recovery stage removed (for simplicity I suppose… that and the BMP can be just excessively loud). The first gain stage also doesn’t have the typical diodes a normal … Read more
Here’s the ColorSound Wah-Wah. I hadn’t laid out a wah before, probably because I haven’t built one myself before, and I don’t use one much when I play. Anyway, the ColorSound Wah-Wah is pretty simple and sounds very good. What makes it unique is that it doesn’t use an inductor like most wah circuits. This … Read more
The OverDriver is a dynamic transparent drive that works great with a tube amp. It’s essentially a massive clean booster that pushes the amp to overdriven tones. Original units from ’69-’70 didn’t have a master volume control, but modern versions do and it’s a good addition to the circuit. (If for some reason you don’t … Read more