Tools, Tones and Toys for Guitarists
And on the eighth day… well not exactly that long ago, but close – and yes others came before, but it’s hard to not acknowledge the Arbiter Fuzz Face as being a giant of vintage fuzz, a design icon if you like, with possibly the most widely recognised enclosure ever made. It’s hard not to like a Fuzz … Read more
The Dinosaural Tube Bender from Dan Coggins of Lovetone fame, who now designs for Thorpy FX. The Thorpy Fat General compressor is actually a Dinosaural OTC-201 Opticompressor. You can read up on that here. This is the most recent trace from Aion Electronics. Aion do a pretty good job of tracing to say the least, … Read more
This is a very unusual one – the Earth Sound Research Graphic Fuzz. Why is it so unusual – have a look at the schematic. It has no input or output caps, and the IC runs at +/- 4.5V. Practically half the parts on the board are for the split rail power supply. Be careful … Read more
This is the Ghost Effects take on the WEM Project V – the Warmjet V. The name is a combination of the original WEM Project V, and the Brian Eno album, Here Comes the Warm Jets, which the pedal was allegedly used on and supposedly remains a favourite of Brian Eno (according to the internet, so it must be … Read more
Univox Unidrive boost with Aion FX mods The original Univox Unidrive was a straight boost, with a bit of dirt – it was a large rocker pedal with preset gain levels on a rotary switch, and the rocker controlled the output level, not unlike a regular volume pedal, but with the increased level of a booster. The don’t … Read more
This is a very simple little circuit from Dead Astronaut, which has a little bit of Big Muff happening in the clipping section on Q2. Maybe not enough to tag it as being in the Big Muff family, it’s certainly a second cousin. While it might be simple, the Dead Astronaut X Fuzz is a fierce little … Read more
The Lovepedal Fuzz Master is a silicon Fuzz Face with a blend control on the input shifting between two capacitors to increase/decrease the frequency range at the input stage. It uses silicon PNP 2N3906 transistors with a standard power supply – so if the layout looks a little odd, that’s what’s happening. V+ goes to the … Read more
The DeArmond Square Wave – it’s pretty much an MXR Distortion + with a couple of minor values changed. It does come in a cooler-looking box… There’s a great analysis of the Distortion Plus on Electrosmash, which will apply equally to the DeArmond Square Wave. DEARMOND SQUARE WAVE – VERO LAYOUT MODS The most obvious place to … Read more
I just realised that I had not posted a Sola Sound Tone Bender MKII layout… I did the Marshall Supa Fuzz earlier, which is kind of same same but the layout caters for larger mojo parts, and even the D*A*M MKII hybrid for a silicon / germanium monster. For completeness, here’s the MKII. SOLA SOUND TONE … Read more
Another variation on the Sola Sound Tone Bender MKII from D*A*M – the Flesh Head. As mentioned, it’s a modified Tone Bender MKII. The 1k Attack pot has been replaced by a 1k resistor, and the 10nf output capacitor has been replaced by two capacitors, one larger and one smaller, with a pot to … Read more