Tools, Tones and Toys for Guitarists
Found the schematic for this over in the Aron Nelson Gallery. It’s designed by Scott Frein. Uses a simple JFET buffer to help push the transistor-based drive section. Here’s his description: A pretty simple overdireve. The buffer on the front really brings it to life. Good AC/DC,ZZ Top crunch from this. Hit it with a … Read more
The Stratoblaster was originally built as an onboard preamp that could be mounted on a Strat in place of the normal output jack canoe. The gain was adjusted by a trim pot (so no external knob), but the circuit provided 3-14 dB of clean boost. It’s a great simple circuit and can fit in a … Read more
Here’s a 1590A candidate. The Kay T-1 Tremolo originally came in a plastic housing with a treadle that controlled the speed. Apparently similar to the Vox Repeat Percussion tremolo, but a little smoother.
Here’s a layout for the stock Univox SuperFuzz. I probably should have drawn this one first and then the modded one below, but it was actually easier to take the modded layout and reverse it back to stock.
Here another classic fuzz, the Mosrite Fuzzrite. This is the silicon version. The original transistors were marked “TZ82” so be sure to use sockets and try a few different ones out. The original pots were 350k and 33k, which are going to be difficult values to track down. You can either use 500k and 50k, … Read more
Many associate this pedal with the fuzz tone for “Spirit in the Sky” by Prodigal Son, though I’m fairly sure that theory has been debunked. At any rate, it’s a great sounding fuzz, and should be a fairly easy build.
FSB forum member Nocentelli posted a schematic for this so I thought I’d draw a perf layout for it. Here’s what he had to say about it: “It’s a fuzz/distortion/dirt circuit designed by Dan Coggins (Lovetone + Dinosaural designer) for ETI magazine in 1993. Having breadboarded it, I like the sound a lot (like Timmy’s … Read more
I think Mark would have squeezed this in a bit more compact size, but i got it “down” to 21×29. So super brave folk may aim for 1590B, but rest of us may want to give this a go with 125B or 1590BB instead. Layout is based on a schematic which was provided with the … Read more
After checking a few things out, this turns out to be slightly modded Maxon DS-830 (thanks johnk for noticing). The 47p, 10n and 180n cap values are measured on board, so i’d suggest using sockets for those and see what values work the best for you. Anyway. This should be safe to build. Playing around … Read more
Since we’re posting tiny circuits today, i thought i’d post a recently traced booster. No input cap, no power filtering or any other modern day trinkets. Tiny booster with outside the box thinking in design. Thanks for trace to Bernardduur at FSB.