Tools, Tones and Toys for Guitarists
Not that long ago, Manfred traced his Reagun Distortion unit and posted the results on FSB. These pedals were sold as Vesta Fire, Nadine’s and Reagun brands around early to mid-eighties. All these were made by Shiino Vesta Fire Corporation (SVFC), which became Vestax back in 1987. Designwise these are not bad at all. This … Read more
Next up from Vitalii’s traces is Moon Metal from later Exar series. Youtube demo found isn’t all that great, but there’s very nice EQ section and gain range seems quite good as well. Not a small circuit, but i think this could be quite usable.
This one is kind of a take on a single opamp overdrive with hard clippers ala OD250/Dist+, but the gain control is placed on the feedback loop like in many standard overdrive designs. Nothing too speacial or different, but a nice addition to overdrive palette nevertheless. Snippet from the spiel:The BL-8 delivers a creamy yet … Read more
Another one from Vitalii’s traces. This one seems quite nice modern metal distortion with reasonable frequency characteristics. Should be enough gain too. The 47K at the top (horizontal one) may be a point to tweak for even more over the top gain. Like so many of these pedals of Polish origin, this one seems to … Read more
VitaliiBobrov is doing an amazing job in tracing Exar pedals. This Polish brand has some decent tones and lots of room for tweaking and trying things out. Once again, try to tweak the values at the inverting input to ground. And try on a different pair of diodes for clippers, etc. No demos around for … Read more
Found this circuit from the DEFX files and thought this to be quite interesting. Discontinued circuit with noise for days. From the source: The GREEN MONSTER septic fuzz (GM2)is an effect pedal to create a septic distortion. Characterized by a dirty, broken and rotten sound. Bad handling! GREEN MONSTER is back with four knobs! There … Read more
Another damn nice trace that’s up on FSB, by Joe from Grey Bench Electronics. This one seems to be a very limited run distortion from Barber, built around the time of the millennium madness.
Here’s Jackson Audio’s MOSFET boost, the Amp Mode. Pretty simple MOSFET circuit with a BJT output buffer. Easy fit in a 1590B.
There was a great post from Grey Bench on FSB, tracing this ten year old Stafford Maxon circuit that i found interesting back in a day, but couldn’t source a schematic back then. This is per original, using only a half of a dual opamp and utilizing a 12×21 board.
