I'm messing about with the Big Muff circuit on my breadboard right now. This is something that came out of it that I thought was really cool sounding. It's the second stage of a Big Muff with a couple of component values changed and a pot added to control the diode clipping. It goes from slightly dirty boost through to nice gritty clipping. I've tried it with BC208, BC107, BC238 and BC547, sounds nice (nasty) with all of them. Si diodes are good, Ge create too much volume drop really. Clipping...

literally a solasound tonebender mk3 with a couple mods
built on the excellent tagboardeffects.blogspot.com vero layout
but
i made mine npn, so turn the electros and diode around.... with some big-ass old cold war era russian 404's. they're FREEKIN HUGE.
but man, they sound sweet.

also included the platetoplate brit face mod, a ge diode to compensate for leakage. this needs to be reversed for npn use. check the diode. some of the ones out there have the ANODE banded, not the CATHODE.

hfe's...

I have just finished up another project for the DIY community that I am calling the Spare Room. It is based on valvewizard's Equinox II reverb, but with a few notable changes. The first is that I take the output of the first delay stage, low pass filter it, and feed that into the input of the second delay stage to create an additional delay stage to help thicken the reverb a little. The second thing I did was address the metallic ringing effect that it has. I did this by introducing an LFO on...

Do you know what I like to do in my free time when I'm not making new circuits? Abusing for audio parts not meant for the purpose! Turns out the ubiquitous TL431 precision programmable reference (I have to thank that for how many I've salvaged so far) answers the can it fuzz? question with a surprisingly bold YES.
The idea came to me from the datasheet itself, showing a test circuit for voltage amplification. That looked surprisingly close to a common emitter amplifier, bias and all, which...

Sup lads,
hope this is apropriate thread for this post.

I'm in a process of updating my personal 3D library of audio-related components: pots, jacks, toggle switches, graphic indicators, you name it.
Right now only 9 components are published, about hundred more to come in a month or so.
I'm trying to make everything as neat as possible, all models are build in respect to both datasheets and real parts. Some small details are missed on purpose, others are approximated, all made to make your...

hello guys, i just finished my PT 80, the sound of the pedal itself is very good, however i am dissatisfied with the feedback potentiometer, is there a mod to work on the pedal with some kind of fine tuning? like in bbd's delays? some trimpot to add to this circuit? hugs

Okay here's the Melon Soda Boost.
melon soda front.jpg
melon soda side.jpg
The whole idea was to put a tone control before a gain stage rather than after, where it usually is. The result is fairly versatile, from treble boost to almost-fuzz and even reaching a nice 'pushed-fender'y kind of grit. I was initially inspired to use part of soda can as a faceplate because of the colour match from the dark green lettering to the Demon TS enclosure.
Melon Soda Boost schem.PNG
the convention I use...

This is my take on a classic variable state filter with optocouplers!

I added a few cool features:
- A possibility to control it with an envelope follower, an expression pedal or a control voltage. (You can actually use the 3 together, but it's a bit weird how it reacts!)
- A mix button, which allows for cool blending, phaser-like sounds.

Using the CV in with a good LFO, you can use it as a LFO-wha, Tremolo or 2 stage phaser.

It has a few imperfections though:
- It does not go into self...

Some way or another I found myself salvaging a lot of ULN2003 and similar chips. Description says Darlington driver , and while I try to be boring and do things properly most of the time, I have to admit that when I desolder random components the first thing I ask myself is can it fuzz? .
Turns out this one can fuzz. Aside from the parasitic diodes and the common diodes, this chip basically contains 7 Darlington pairs with accessible base and collector pins and some included resistors. This...

I use this in all my active instruments, and also in some outboard 9V battery powered boxes. The Indicator flashes green about once per second to remind you that your electronics are powered on. When the battery drops below 7 volts, the light turns solid red.

The Indicator draws a very tiny amount of current from the battery (just 30 microamps while the battery is good), so it won’t drain it while monitoring it.

I think it would make a fun first-time surface mount project, since only one...

Hey there.

Ive been really getting into making some valve-casters lately. A good lock-down hobby! :-)

So have been searching for nice tubes seeing whats out there. I found 12AU7(A)s to be really nice. Got some old stock.
Sounds like 12AUX doesnt work so well according to some folks.

I tried a new 12au7 Electro Harmonix but wasn't as nice. Got too dirty in the wrong places. So I am guessing the 12AU7(A) is nice because it's slightly different lower microphonic specs. ?
(Or are vintage...

Here is my take on the Engl 530 preamp including tone stack (can be left out if desired).
Because the Engl does not use a cathode follower before the tone stack the final gain stage clips only on one half cycle of the waveform - for this reason I have used only one clipping transistor base/emitter junction :wink:
enjoy :thumbsup
bajaman
Baja ENG overdrive pedal with switchable tone stack 9v 080218.GIF

Is this the correct schematic for a Fender Deluxe 90 Footswitch? If so what is the input at +/- ? Since I'm trying to figure out how this switch works...

I've been playing around with making the Broadcast simpler and hopefully keeping the same character as the original but with only cheap and common parts. In the end it's not far from the usual bjt overdrive/fuzz circuit already. I don't like the original that much, I don't even care about making this a complete build for now. You could say I'm doing this in pure uncalled for spite :D and fun.

narrowcast.PNG

I have tried to remove the transformer, to replace the germanium with a silicon NPN,...

HI all,
Ive been lurking around forums trying to work this one out.

So i've made a couple of Valve-Casters now and really digging the sound!! Especially with a strat. :-)

Works fine with a battery, but when I plug in my DC power I get a very low hum. I have a decent Alctron DCT-200 power supply with 12v & 9v options.

After reading some posts I added a 640uf Capacitor across the pos-neg input and it did reduce the hum. But not much. I added another cap and it reduced again. But still...

The story of this project began when a friend of mine asked me to modify his phaser (a classic 4-stage FET that I can't remember the part number of) so that he could disengage the LFO and use it as a fixed bandpass filter.
The simple operation made him so happy that he asked me to build him another one.
So, as I wanted to build a phaser with optos elements for a while, I designed a first very simple circuit, without modulation, with 8 selectable stages, but with the possibility to control it...

I really enjoyed messing about with Fairfield's unpleasant surprise circuit on the breadboard (or at least the schematic called the calamity fuzz that bugg has over at his pcb site), so I made a clone. If you haven't come across it before, it's a heavily gated and compressed aggro-fuzz, with three mode switches. It does some truly deranged sounds, some useful dark/doomy/sludge/stoner metal chug, but it's also capable of some very interesting textural stuff when you play with the onset control...