Tools, Tones and Toys for Guitarists
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
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
I just bought this rather beat-up Vox BM1 Escort practice amp from the seventies, or maybe early eighties today. I’m thinking seventies, as it doesn’t have an IEC power connector, and the grill cloth is the red/brown colour. The back panel looks different to the one on Vox showroom and other photos that I’ve seen, so … Read more
This is the distortion section from a Vox Super Beatle V1141 amplifier, which happens to be almost identical to the Colorsound one knob fuzz. So much so that I used the layout and transistor selection from the D*A*M version. Interesting when you look at the schematic, as the distortion effect is first in the signal chain, ahead … Read more
I did a point to point layout for this some time ago, which was actually my first post for this blog. Full description via the link above. The Colorsound Tone Bender Distortion is more distortion than bender – there are zero similarities between a MKI, MKII or MKIII bender and this circuit. COLORSOUND TONE BENDER DISTORTION – … Read more
This is the original layout for the Hornby Skewes Hybrid Zonk Machine (Silicon / Germanium). Unfortunately, the trimmer needed to be a different size for the layout, so I had to make a strange triangular marker. HORNBY SKEWES HYBRID ZONK MACHINE – 0.15″ VERO LAYOUT (ORIGINAL)
After spending a fair bit of time playing with fuzz, I realised I have never tried a Roger Mayer Axis Fuzz. So long overdue. I may have pins 1 & 3 the wrong way around on the fuzz control (reminder for me). ROGER MAYER AXIS FUZZ – VERO LAYOUT
Also known as the JHS & Ricken’s Fuzz – the JEN FZ III Fuzz is a simple silicon variation on a Tone Bender MKII. First things first – this is reported to be very bright, so maybe increase the 10n capacitors to something a little larger to let more lows through, or add a 10n to … Read more
And more Tone Bending… just make sure you add a decent size capacitor to decouple the output, I doubt anyone wants / needs stray DC escaping your fuzz. MARSHALL SUPAFUZZ PROTOTYPE – TAG BOARD LAYOUT MARSHALL SUPAFUZZ PROTOTYPE – VIDEO
Just to continue on Tone Benders for a little longer… Marshall SupaFuzz on tag board. MARSHALL SUPAFUZZ – TAG BOARD LAYOUT