Tools, Tones and Toys for Guitarists
Something of a classic and many other designs are based on the MXR Distortion + so no real need for an introduction. MXR DISTORTION PLUS – VERO LAYOUT DISTORTION PLUS ANALYSIS There’s an excellent analysis of the Distortion + here on Electrosmash including a schematic (be prepared for some maths) Note that I have used alternate pot … Read more
There’s always room for one more Super Fuzz – this time, it’s the Zvex Octane 2, which is a Super Fuzz with a simplified boost stage, and the notch filter can also be adjusted – probably more of a filter depth control than a tone control as such, but that’s just what Zvex called it. … Read more
The Earthquaker Devices Terminal Fuzz is based on the Shin-Ei Companion Fuzz, with a few tweaks to improve performance and versatility. The first section is actually a lot like a silicon Fuzzrite. Q1 feeds directly into Q2 – they feed into either side of the treble control with quite small capacitors. The treble pot is followed … Read more
The Musitronics Mu-Tron Micro V is a cool old auto-wah / envelope filter from the seventies – I feel I need to be wearing a valour tracksuit, possibly with a half-unzipped jacket exposing generous chest hair with a gold dangler to really play this properly. Maybe a moustache too… I’ve used a LM13700 instead … Read more
The Durham Sex Drive. Named as such, as it was initially made for Charlie Sexton. This is actually one of the first builds I ever did with an IC using the layout from Guitar FX Layouts – it’s a nice easy one, and it sounds great too. Despite having a compression switch, it’s really … Read more
It has now been traced by Aion FX – updated layout can be found here. The Pete Cornish P-2 is somewhat of a mystery as it’s never been traced, so all information is gleamed and guessed from various sources. It seems that no one, including myself, wants to pay top dollar to de-goop what we all … Read more
The Emanating Fist Black Dust is yet another one-knob Fuzz Face variant. Emanating Fist is part of the D*A*M family of effects. EMANATING FIST BLACK DUST – VERO LAYOUT VIDEO DEMO
So after a couple of larger than necessary layouts, I thought I might go small and simple: I give you, the D*A*M Meathead, which is of course a one-knob silicon Fuzz Face variant. This has a small input cap for a fuzz face type circuit – expect it to be very midrange focused. D*A*M MEATHEAD … Read more
The Pete Cornish G-2 is a Big Muff variant: germanium diodes, double buffered, and sporting a low-pass filter instead of the usual Big Muff tone stack. That being said, this is not your standard Big Muff – there’s little resemblance in sound, largely due to the lack of scooped mid-range provided by a standard Big … Read more
The Pete Cornish CC-1 is an interesting one – two stages of soft clipping and a three-band active tone stack. I initially built and tested the CC-1 using the larger of the two layouts below, and I can’t say that I immediately loved it at the time. Regarding others in the Cornish line-up, I preferred the … Read more