Tools, Tones and Toys for Guitarists
I came across the schematic for this while looking through RunOffGroove.com. It’s an interesting mashup of Tim Escobedo’s Idiot Wah and the LFO section from the EA Tremolo to produce a faux phaser effect, and apparently works very well at higher speeds.
Here’s a quicky for your Saturday. The Blue Clipper was one of the small effects units by Dan Armstrong that plugged straight into your guitar output jack. It uses one side of a JRC4558 to produce a basic distortion effect.
Jen was an Italian manufacturer in the 60s and 70s that produced their own line of effects in addition to OEM stuff for other brands like Gretsch and Vox. This fuzz effect is essentially a Fuzz Face with an emitter follower up front and clipping diodes on the output. It produces a treble-heavy fuzz with … Read more
Stumbled across this effect while looking for a completely different schematic. It’s a low cost chorus designed by Merlin Blencowe (here’s his schematic for reference), using a PT2399. It generates deep modulation and a very thick warble (here’s a sound clip).
Got a request for the S2, but have been unable to track down a schematic for it, so here’s the S1 in the meantime. It’s an emulator/preamp of a Soldano tube amp, and like most amp emulators it uses JFET transistors. The original uses mostly SMD components with the exception of some capacitors, which is … Read more
Like many of the old germanium fuzzes, the Burns Buzzaround can be difficult to get right. It also uses 3 sometimes costly germanium transistors, and unless you also build a power inverter or use NPN transistors, you can’t daisy chain it with other negative ground effects. To get around these hurtles, Mictester designed a work-a-like … Read more
The Improbability Drive is a knob-tweaker’s dream–equal parts, overdrive, fuzz, and science experiement, and gets its name from Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. This one was a bit of a challenge (I even had to use a jumper. Gah!). B3ar over on FSB requested a layout with onboard pots and switches. Couldn’t get the switches to … Read more
This is the silicon version of the GB-80. The darlington pair of transistors in the GB-80 aren’t needed as silicon transistors have enough gain, and the rest of the circuit has just been tweaked for the silicon transistors. One problem people seemed to have cloning this circuit over on FSB was biasing the transistors properly. … Read more
Here’s the germanium version of D*A*M’s GreaseBox fuzz. It’s based on the Tone Bender Mk. III but without the tone control. Q1 and 2 form a darlington pair to amplify the signal, and Q3 provides the fuzziness. The original units are positive ground effects and use PNP germanium transistors. That is reflected in the perf … Read more
The Rocket is Aron Nelson’s modified version of Gus Smalley’s 3 Transistor Fuzz. Basically it’s a Fuzz Face with an emitter follower in front of it. Just about any medium to high gain transistor will work. Not a bad idea to socket some of the capacitors and try different values (see Aron’s schematic and notes … Read more