Tools, Tones and Toys for Guitarists
Since I’m on a Fuzz Face thing at the moment – the JB Fuzz Face is basically Soviet-era germanium transistors with trimmers. Soviet transistors definitely have a slightly different texture to them when it comes to fuzz. DUNLOP JOE BONAMASSA FUZZ FACE – VERO LAYOUT
FUZZ FACE VARIANT SCHEMATIC, INCLUDING MK1.5 & VOX TONE BENDERS The schematic includes room for components not present on a standard fuzz face, as some variants have additions. I thought I’d keep it relatively simple and not venture into circuits with input blends or the various trimmers substituted for resistors (at least for now … Read more
A nice simple one – the Analog Man Astrotone, which is pretty much a stock Astrotone, with some mods to make it worthwhile. The original circuit is a bit thin and is said to only sound good with the volume right up, making it too loud to use in most situations. The Analogman mods fix this, … Read more
After realising I had the “right” transistors for this, I thought I should have a crack at a Vox Tone Bender. I’ve done a generic vero layout with room for mods, with some common values listed – I guess the most obvious is the external bias pot, which could be replaced with a standard 8k2 resistor. The D*A*M … Read more
A full description can be found here, which is the tagboard layout. I built mine on tagboard, but that isn’t for everyone, so the standard vero layout is below. D*A*M FUZZ SOUND FS-77 – VERO LAYOUT
Not really a Tonebender; it’s really a Big Muff in disguise – minus a couple of diodes and a gain stage. These were built in the 1970s COLORSOUND JUMBO TONEBENDER – VERO LAYOUT COLORSOUND JUMBO TONEBENDER – VIDEO DEMO
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So given the Lightspeed and Southland are basically the same circuit, I thought I might add a switch to swap between the two. The switch does three things; Switches the hard clipping diodes in/out Changes op-amp gain (to account for the hard clipping diodes) Changes Drive pot resistance While they use different op-amps, they’re both … Read more
The Soma 63 is an amp in a box style pedal, with the usual array of J201s with trimmers replacing valves, an amp-style tone stack, and a transformer at the end of the signal chain thrown in for good measure. I added some mounting points on this, as you don’t want a board with a transformer on … Read more
Greer Amps have taken the Lightspeed overdrive and have made a few mods to give us the Southland Harmonic Overdrive. added a set of hard clippers after the first gain stage boosted the gain of the output to make up for the BAT41 hard clippers increase the drive pot value Could try germanium diodes instead … Read more