Dr. Balls

I have been drim.

2012-01-06T16:20:00.000-05:00

Roight. This one came as a request from my bud Ray "Wisconsin Ray" Walker from Arizona. Dude said he's in a new garage band and needs a fuzz pedal, so I reached all the way back to the beginning of fuzz and pulled out this doozie. Back in the early 60's there were effects for guitar and organ but they were usually focused on making delay or reverb sounds. The very first devices for making intentional distortion were fuzz boxes, and this is the very first one of them, the Maestro FZ-1. This is THE one heard on the Rolling Stones "Satisfaction", and countless other early american and british garage and psych rock and roll tracks. It pre-dates the fuzz face and the tone bender, and in some ways it shows it. It doesnt have the refined, meatier sounds of some of the later fuzzers. Instead the sound is quite bright and buzzy, but in doing so it stays cool and classic sounding. You wanted garage....this is garage!

This version was made using my old standby, the "weird-old-stock" Soviet MП38A germanium transistor. Controls are Volume and Attack and they should pretty much both be cranked at all times.

**post title courtesy of J Pereira!!!**

Oye Como, Brah

2011-12-21T14:23:00.000-05:00

I've written about the legendary ProCo Rat before, but this is version is a little special because it crams a few different Rats into one nice package. Without getting to techinally mumbo-jumbally, these use the basic Rat topology and play with the clipping diodes to allow for four different voicings which are selectable via the big red knob on the side. Within the four voicings are the standard rat (sometimes called the vintage rat) and the turbo rat which is a bit louder and more rough than the standard rat. There's also a more clipped setting which is a bit more compressed and smooth than the standard rat, and an less clipped setting which is loud as shit, and tougher than RUN DMC. They all sound killer with guitar, and the latter is a great option for bass distortion as well. Rip it up!

That's your bro, bro.

2011-11-14T15:34:00.000-05:00

Built up five premium-mojo clones of the original Sola-Sound MKII Professional Tone Bender. These are one-by-one going to eBay for sale, and depending on how things go there may be more batches in the future.

The MKII Professional Tone Benders is one of the most iconic British fuzzes ever produced, notably used by Jimmy Page, Jeff Beck, Mick Ronson, and a ton more. It's saturated, thick, and juicy and just sounds like fuzz heaven. I *is* Led Zep I and you will love the everliving shit out of this pedal.

These are germanium transistor fuzzes, built using old stock Soviet MП38A transistors. The transistors were handpicked for gain and tested in the circuit to ensure that everything meets my standards of badass-ery. Everything in the units is primo quality using Vishay/Sprague caps and Carling footswitches. Everything about these is old school and awesome.

"Buy Old Style in a 30 rack or don't buy it all." - The Bible

2011-10-03T12:23:00.000-04:00

A duo of Rangemasters! I've written about Rangemasters before so i'll keep this one light.

These were requested by two buds of mine that are doing a one-off Black Sabbath tribute night. They were searching out that Tony Iommi sound and I told them there's only one pedal needed: a Rangemaster. A germanium booster running up into a classic British tube amp like a Marshall or Laney is really all you need to get that thick, goopy overdrive that is all over the first couple of Sabbath records. Tony's original rangemaster was supposedly modded, and it sounds like it, but no one knows what the specific modification was. The most common way to mod this circuit is a switchable input cap to go from treble boost to other ranges of boost. That's what I did on these 2 units, and by my own tests I think the full-range setting is the most Iommi of them all.

Controls are boost level and a range switch which selects the original treble boost, full range boost, or bass boost. The original delivered units were plain polished aluminum but the new owners made some graphical adjustments to be more in-line with the looks of a vintage unit. A nice touch for sure....look for a run of these with graphics from me in the future.

A fig in cat's clothing.

2011-09-21T14:49:00.000-04:00

For reference, the title is not about fruits, kittens, or apparel. It is instead about the couple of Kiss records when Peter Criss was secretly replaced by Anton Fig. Go figure.

These pedal circuits are nothing new to this blog, just cataloging some of my recent builds. They've all been posted here before in one form or another, so search them out if needed.

TS-808 Tube Screamer:

"Russian Green" Big Muffs:

Foxx Tone Machine:

Basic Fuzzes:

Digital Delay:

Chill Fraxton.

2011-09-20T16:37:00.000-04:00

Chill Fraxton!!! Thats about 18 inside-jokes-deep so I wont get into it, but holy shit. Alright then... this here is a clone of the legendary Octavia octave fuzz pedal. The story behind it is that the original was designed by Roger Mayer for Hendrix, and at some point engineers at Tycobrahe got ahold of the original unit and cloned it and sold it as the Tycobrahe Octavia. Its likely a bogus story, but regardless Tycobrahe manufactured *this* version of the Octavia in the 70s, and it is king shit of fuck mountain.

So its an octave/fuzz, which, by the old parlance means a fuzz that gets certain octave overtones, especially as you go higher up on the neck. The fuzz itself is not smooth like a big muff or the like. Its more raunchy and gated sounding. Chords can get really wild sounding, accentuated by the octave effect that happens. Notes shine and sustain well and just sound really big and full.. One nice thing is that the aforementioned gating of the sound works well to hush out any background noise when you arent playing. So it goes from quiet to complete destruction in an instant. A totally amazing fuzz, if you ask me. I'm still messing with it, but this one just might replace the two fuzzes in my personal rig.

Also built one up in a mirror finish enclosure with an LED for good friend, Ben Murphy:

Overdriving Miss Daisy.

2011-09-07T11:22:00.000-04:00

I've definitely posted about this circuit before, so i'll keep it to a minimum. The Klon Centaur is basically the end-all for overdrive circuits. Tons of boost, smooth compressed overdrive, and everything in between. If you've been tirelessly searching for the perfect overdrive for ages but havent yet been able to find it, this is what you've been looking for. Here's two Klone work-alikes I built recently.

Credit to Ryan "Shaggy" Hull for the title to this post!

Secular Bromanticism.

2011-09-01T15:09:00.000-04:00

Well, this is a big steaming pile of horseshit, aint it? It was a surprise gift/torture device made for the inexcusable Bret Shirley (Black Congress). The deal is that I just built this and sent it to him out of the blue, with no explanation of what did what, only which jacks were ins and which were outs. Call it a grand gesture of "figure it out yourself, dummy!" It's presented like three modules from a modular synth, but all in one housing. You can feed it a signal via guitar or keys or whatever, and if you've really got a death wish you can try to play it on its own with no input. Also each module has a separate in and out, so you can run them in any order you please.

Module 1 (left) is an envelope filter based off of the old DOD 440. The two controls are level and range but they might as well be florp and squawk, because that's what the circuit does!

Module 2 (middle) is a tremolo based off of the 4MS Tremulus Lune. It is an absolutely fantastic, if not complicated, tremolo. Top two controls are a coarse and fine adjustment for speed, and it lets you go from a rapidly vibrating pulse all the way down to a swell every 2-3 seconds. The other two controls are for depth and spacing. The spacing control is particularly cool because it controls the smoothness of the pulses. You can go from a nice, organic swell up and swell down, or can make it ultra choppy like you're flicking a switch on and off.

Module 3 (right) is based off of Tim Escobedo's "Ugly Face" circuit. It is an enormous pile of shit in the best possible way. Its *kind of* a fuzz, but gritty to an extreme, sharp, treble-y, and wildly uncontrollable. I really dont know what I can say about it other than it's completely terrible and insane and perfect for Bret. What the controls do is a mystery.

~~Cheech Marin~~ Bret adorned it with a sticker and sent me a pic of it in his noise-making setup which includes, among other things, a keyboard stand.

Boners that shoot darts out of them.

2011-08-11T15:04:00.000-04:00

Oh heavens me. How have I never written about the awesome funk fizzle that is the Mosrite Fuzzrite? No clue, but here it goes. This one was done on request for Chris Ryan (The Energy, Black Congress, Secret Prostitutes), and then I also made a sister unit for myself just to have in the shelves. This is a clone of the OG unit, which used germanium transistors. Apparently only like 250 of that era were ever made, so theyre rare birds, and pricey ones at that. Oh well...clone it up.

The Fuzzrite is *odd* in topology when compared next to a lot of the other classic circuits like a fuzz face or a tone bender. Theres a pretty standard volume control but the "fuzz" control (called "depth" on the original units) adjusts the spittle and fizz at the same time that it adjusts tone, and also kinda plays like a blend control as well. "What the shit does all that mean, jackass?" Well it means that fully clocked it is sharp and treble-y and fuzzy in a brittle 60's garage kinda way. When you back off on the control is where it gets interesting. The tone becomes more bass-y, less fuzzy, and sounds like you're blending into the dry signal from your guitar. That means that the circuit plays really well with your existing distortion (amp distortion or a dirt box) and allows you to color your distortion with a bit of fuzz, but you can still hear both. For the same reason this one sounds cool with bass as well, where you usually want less fuzz than a guitar so you dont get lost in the mix. I built one of these for Todd Martin (Fletcher C. Johnson, The Ex-Humans) who uses it for bass and it's always a head-turner when he clicks it on.

Good lord, thats a lot of description for 2 knobs. Both are bright-ass orange.

"Me Mates Crisps" for $1000, Alex.

2011-08-03T15:45:00.000-04:00

Roight, then. I've built many a booster in my time, based around a few different circuits. Usually they go away as quick as I build them, so this was an attempt to build all of them and have one of each at my disposal. Four different boosters in a variety of autumnal colors. How divine.

Left to Right they are: an AMZ Mosfet Boost, AMZ Mini Boost, Balls Boost, and a ZVEX Super Hard-On. The AMZ Mosfet is a pretty standard mosfet boost, which behaves like cranking a tube amp. It provides volume and a little dirt, increasing toward the far end of the dial. The Mini Boost is configured differently and provides a not-so-clean boost. Its basically cranked and then the volume is attenuated at the pedal output so it always gets a *little* overdriven transistor tone. The Balls Boost (formerly blogged as the "Orange Droolius") is a modified version of the AMZ Mosfet which behaves similarly but adds a touch more filth and some extra bass. The ZVEX SHO is stock.

Burgers in the rue morgue.

2011-07-27T16:36:00.000-04:00

ProCo Rats! They're awesome. You dont wanna admit that a plain old "distortion" pedal can be so cool, but fuck it is. These are the same simple circuit as the original rat of the late seventies using a single op-amp gain stage, silicon clipping diodes, and a FET buffer on the output. They sound shitty and gritty and the tone stack is a wild fucking mule and all of it rules.

The one in gold is for Dann Miller (Weird Party, Black Congress, and formerly The Jonbenet) and the one in copper is for my shelves, at least until a taker comes along. One of these was my 150th pedal built, but I dont know which. Go me.

Credit to the klippinest klop, the most practically black, Will Adams, for the post title!!!

Workin for me mates.

2011-07-26T17:14:00.000-04:00

This here's a special fuzz box built for the lovely Jana Hunter of Lower Dens. It's a clone of a specific Big Muff from the late 70's known as the "IC" Big Muff. These were from a short timeframe when the muff was redisgned from its standard 4-transistor layout to one using 3 gain stages provided by two integrated circuits. Sound like a bunch of fancy mumbo jumbo? It is, but the point is that the shit sounds different!

These were in fact the black sheep of the Big Muff family and used to be available on the used market for prices ranging from two to four cents. That is until Siamese Dream came out and everyone realized that they sound pretty dang kickass. They have same scooped mids that all muffs have, but where the others have a distortion sound that's really smooth and almost overdrive-y, this one sounds like a crushing wall of disaster. Its super cool.

Controls are: Volume, Tone, Sustain (L-R)

Crampin'

2011-07-08T16:58:00.000-04:00

The concept for this amp is the brainchild of ScottVA over on the Weber amps forum. Its basically the initial preamp from an 18W lite, the tone stack from a 5E3 deluxe, a long-tailed-pair phase inverter, and a cathode biased power section. This one is dual KT-66s and it is a monster sounding amp clocking in somewhere under 30W.

The idea is to keep things minimal, so the preamp is sparse, as is the iron, and it keeps the whole things pretty light. The sound out of it is amazing. Its not too gainy and has a lot of clean head room with a tele and a little bit less with a les paul. No matter what youre playing it gets a good bit of crunch at the end of the volume dial. The cleans are VERY blackface bassman to me and that is so kickass. The crunch is straight plexi, with a bit more bassy full-ness due to the KT-66s. Call it something between a plexi and a tweed bassman/JTM-45. Brilliant.

Controls are Volume and Tone because you dont need anything else in life.

Party on the patio.

2011-06-02T16:59:00.000-04:00

This here little dude is an amp built for the uncompromisingly awesome Jordan Graber. He needed something small just to jam around the house and I know he has an existing cabinet there, so a head was the obvious choice. And when you're going small and classy, its really hard to avoid the Tweed Champ circuits. They're just SO cool and they sound like Billy Gibbons shredding a case of Tecate.

This has Magnetic Component transformers, Mallory signal caps, NOS RCA 5Y3 Rectifier, Tung-Sol 6V6, and a JJ 12AX7. The cabinet was built by your truly out of pine. Shit rules.

Yuengling Malmsteen.

2011-06-01T10:34:00.000-04:00

This was built for the legendary sleeve eater, the Crampaw, as part of a drunken horse-trade for some carny-ass Ludwigs and a lifetime of hilarious jokes. I hope you're confused...it only gets weirder.

So I was asked to get weird with a delay pedal. Ive built a ton of analog delays before and while they sound fantastic, they lack a certain amount of flexibility in the weirdness department. The technology used to build them was monumental at the time it was developed, but its just limited. To enhance the ridiculousness, I needed to go outside of the analog delay scope here so I went with the PT2399 digital delay chip. Delays from this chip are just superb. Not as warm and organic as from an analog setup but pretty dang good and MAN you can get some repeats! And you can do so with a lot less parts and tweaking than you need for an analog outfit. Perfect.

So I went with that but made two of the same circuit so that your delays can have delays. One cascades into the other and you can get some bizarre repeat tempos when both are on. You can also just use one or the other as you please. Each delay is switchable via footswitch, and the large knobs control the mix for each delay. With the knobs completely down its as if the unit was completely out of the signal chain. This worked out well because it may be used for keys and the delays can be dialed on or off by hand while playing. Knobs across the top are: delay time 1, repeat length 1, delay time 2, repeat length 2.

Holy hot shit hunk of gold.

2011-05-19T14:17:00.000-04:00

Holy smokes, its a wah. What does it do? It wahs, and it is gold. What more do you need?

Most people dont know this but much of the wah-wah pedal world uses the exact same circuit layout as the original wahs, with just some component value changes. Because of this, the circuit is just *ripe* for tweaking the values to get different voicings, and thats exactly what this one is. This one features some more modern features like true bypass switching, and it has been tweaked to enlarge the sweep range a bit, and also improve the bottom end.

Voltron.

2011-05-03T11:53:00.000-04:00

This fuckin' thing!!

This was made on request by my buddy Johnny Pockets. Its a five-up multi effect unit. The goal seemed to be rooted in ridiculousness, and by god I like that. The effects in this are (from right to left):

Fuzz Face: a bog standard silicon transistor fuzz face. universally awesome fuzz.

Boosters: two (count-em) two ZVEX super hard-ons, with the trick being that one is always on, and one is switchable. I have built that booster for a few people that immediately ask for another because they want to leave one on all the time, and switch the other one in as needed.

Effects loop: An effects loop in an effect pedal? YEP. Sometimes you need to throw some other boxes into your pedal chain, and sometimes you want em in the middle. So I threw one in here after the dirt section but before the modulation section. I dont know what you'd want to put in here, necessarily, but I thought a wah went damn well.

Delay: analog delay based on the Madbean Aquaboy. RAD sounding delay which can also do some slapback reverb if you really crank down the delay time. Slapback reverb is kickass.

Tremolo: using the modified EA tremolo. a super-solid sounding trem that has the bonus of a whipass boost in it as well! If you need a THIRD boost (who doesnt, really?) then you can crank down the trem depth and use this as a straight boost.

Phase: bog-standard clone of the MXR Phase 45, my personal favorite phaser.

Bee Bee Bee Baaaaahhh

2011-04-13T10:42:00.000-04:00

The term "BeeBaa" makes me think of one of my Boston-native friends talking about that adorable pop-sensation Justin Beiber. This pedal is no teenage girl's wet dream, though.

The Roland AF-100 BeeBaa was a semi-rare fuzz from the 70's, with some unique features for fuzzes at the the time. First off, the fuzz on this is not that mellow psyche-y fuzz that you're used to from 60's circuits.. If a fuzz face adds some wool to your sound, the BeeBaa adds a whole box of K-Mart sweaters and a roll of shag carpeting. The controls are pretty standard for a fuzz (volume, tone, sustain) but there is an additional switch to toggle between two fuzz voicings, one more bass-y than the other. This BeeBaa also features a separate stomp for a treble boost circuit, just like the originals. This is not a separate circuit entirely, but merely bypasses much of the fuzz circuitry and provides signal boost. If used right, it can be an excellent way to toggle between a boosted gainy sound to an all out fuzz.

Pic below and sound clip (WHAT!!!) following that. That's right, turds, i've been asked for clips of some of this stuff and so i'm trying to oblige. Pardon my awful playing.

Cramble on.

2011-03-24T12:49:00.000-04:00

Ahhhhhh holy shit, another ToneBender. Why another ToneBender? Because they fucking rule like some knees on some bees. And because the customer requested it when given the lineup of "uhhh...do you wanna go more Hendrix, Page, or Gilmour with this?". Page was picked and so here is a vintage-modern MKII tonebender.

Its largely built as a vintage late-60's ToneBender would be, but with some modern touches like AC-power, negative ground polarity and an LED to make it a bit more useful in today's world. Transistors are WOS (weird-old-stock) germanium Soviet ГТ311Бs selected to appropriate gain specs and biased to taste. The thing sounds gritty like a fuzz face but more smooth and fat. I dont know how else to describe it but the thing is kinda *thick* sounding. Super tight. Ive also recently fallen in love with these knobs, so they got put to use, and may on future builds as well!

The most polished turd.

2011-03-22T10:32:00.000-04:00

Okay its not a turd. But for something thats designed to annihilate your guitar's sound like the Incredible Hulk on a coke bender, I sure chose a classy way to package it up. This finish looks like fine English leather and the insides sound like a constipated tauntaun. Ahh...it must be a Noise Swash.

The Noise Swash circuit, at its heart, doesnt look too much different then a standard distortion pedal. Its not far off from something like a ProCo RAT, but imagine that you took one and added way too many controls. Instead of a normal, healthy distortion unit, this one lets you starve the whole thing of power, shunt various parts in and out of the circuit, and tweak all sorts of little instabilities which in total amounts to weird, glitchy sounds, and sometimes just making sound on its own. ZANY.

Controls are: (upper row) Power starve, Noisegate, Swash, Tone, Volume, (lower row) pre-gain, post-gain, pre clipping on/off, post clipping on/off, oscillator on/off, oscillator frequency

Achilles last flan.

2011-03-18T14:55:00.000-04:00

HOLEEE CRAP, its been a while. Was out of town there for a bit and I just havent gotten much built in a while, or at least not completed. Here's one I made prior to my travels for the legendary crambler, Mr. John Adams. John was looking for a number of things but one thing he was after was some sort of gain box to be used with keys! Keys arent really my specialty but I started thinking about gain boxes, and preamps of the vintage nature, and came to this dude.

What is it? Its a clone of the old Echoplex preamp! What most people dont realize is that in addition to delay, the old Echoplex units were used by countless players simply as preamps/boosters. This includes Page, Van Halen, etc. So this is just that....the Echoplex with all the fancy stuff removed, and shoved into pedal form. Err.....not actually pedal form, though. By request this guy was made to be an effect box to sit on top of the keyboard, and thus has a toggle for hand operation. Cramble on.

Banana War.

2011-03-03T12:09:00.000-05:00

Ring Ring Ring Ring Ring Ring Ring........ This is yet another in the long list of Big Muffs that I will build in my life. I've already raved about the glory of the Big Muff on here, but FUCK are they ever glorious! Good for that stoner metal fuzz-chunk, and good for those Gilmour/Fripp sustain-city leads. I dont even know why I bother making them with a sustain knob any more because it needs to be cranked always. In fact, maybe I should do that....

Anyway, this one is built to the Russian "civil war" unit specs, so named for the blue/grey color scheme the originals came in. I chose to go with banana-yellow, which is not very civil war at all. Deal with it.

p.s. yes that was a Raffi joke at the beginning

Horizoning.

2011-02-24T12:33:00.000-05:00

This is an older build for my tight bro Adam Wentworth (Bloodhorse, All Pigs Must Die). I dont remember specifically what he was looking for or how our conversation went then, only that we decided on building him a Rangemaster.

What is a Rangemaster, you might ask? Oh man....have you heard any recordings from any 1960's or 70's British rock bands? There's probably one of them on all of the guitar tracks. At the time players were looking for ways to brighten up their dark British valve amps, and Dallas Arbiter developed the Rangemaster. Its a booster, which helps overdrive your amp, but its also a TREBLE booster. That means that it boosts your high notes more than your notes, which as you can imagine is great for ripping sustain-rich solos. The originals weren't even pedals, they were little boxes that sat on your amp and pretty much stayed on all the time. The Rangemaster and a Vox AC30 is theee Brian May sound, if that tells you anything.

This Rangemaster was built with an AC187 germanium transistor and also features a tone knob which blends between two input caps to color the sound to your liking. The knobs are tone and boost.

Also be sure to check out Bloodhorse's awesome pink floyd spae-metal record HORIZONER.

Pedal-building fuel.

2011-02-22T14:47:00.000-05:00

Re-House party.

2011-02-22T12:36:00.000-05:00

Do you know about the DOD 555-A Performer Distortion? Its a classic distortion effect that DOD made in the early 80s and man was it a weirdo. It ran off of TWO 18V power supplies and (surprisingly for a DOD product) didnt blow ass. It actually sounded quite nice in a vintage RAT kinda way. Good for overdrive, and great for full-up grinder distortion.

Well I had one but the case had just gone to complete shit. The flimsy DOD switch was busted, the battery door was gone, the knobs were all broken, and the pots were going too. Solution? Re-house it in a sturdy enclosure with a rugged-ass switch, new pots and new knobs. Even better solution? Make the enclosure gigantic!!! I also added a small charge-pump board to provide 18V supply off a standard 9V power supply, so no dealing with 2 batteries. Proceed, shredders.

One stop shredding.

2011-02-22T12:08:00.000-05:00

Who doesnt love the Fuzz Face? It's a CLASSIC. Its what almost every legendary guitar hero in the 60s started with, and while many of them moved on to other fuzzy landscapes, its hard to deny the universal appeal of these badass little dudes. If you dont love the fuzz face even a little bit, you might just have something terribly wrong with you.

This guy is a relatively stock germanium fuzz face. Its not completely stock for a few reasons. First off, tracking down the vintage AC128 or NKT275 germanium transistors is pricey and unnecessary, in my humble opinion. Second, these original units were of a reverse polarity from most modern pedal devices, which makes using external power supplies complicated, and that just sucks in this modern world. So fuck all that. I used some new old stock 2N1302 germs with smashing results. Everything else is stock values with Sprague and Mallory caps.

I liked this one so much that I made another, this time using old-stock Soviet germaniums (ГТ311Б!) of appropriate gain. Sounds just as sweet and just as fuzzy.

Both of these lil' ragers are still available at the time of this post.

Scorpin a bub.

2011-02-16T17:58:00.000-05:00

Yet another Foxx Tone Machine!!! These things are just so cool that I cant help but suggest them to everyone who's looking for that fuzz they've been missing. This one's for Josh Valleau (of Imani Coppola's and John Legend's bands....seriously). Think about that next time you hear a fuzz ripper from one of them.

Per Josh's request this one had no LEDs, and a top-mount for the knobs and octave switch. Josh picked it up from me Saturday and said he played with it all afternoon and that it was "KILLER".

Pass the dutchie.

2011-02-11T15:11:00.000-05:00

This pedal is for the incomparably cool Mark Twistworthy. Mark runs one of my favorite blogs called Texas Punk Treasure Chest (although he's slacking on the El Flaco posts) and is also in a few extremely kickass bands like The No No No Hopes and Come and Take It. Mark also was a clerk at my local record store when I was a teenager and has a great mix-up story about selling a kid a copy of Youth of Today's "Break Down the Walls", when the kid was actually looking for Musical Youth's album "Youth of Today". Pass the dutchie, Cappo.

Ahhhh anyway...so Mark was looking for something to dirty up his bass sound. After some discussion we determined he was after a fuzz box, and I knew it just had to be the basic fuzz. The origins of that circuit are the great Bazz Fuss which was supposed to a fuzz FOR bass, although it kills with guitar as well. So there you go....simple....easy....fuzzzz.

Mayor McSpaceFuzz.

2011-02-11T11:27:00.000-05:00

I told you more delays were coming! This one is for the esteemed Mayor of Greenpoint Brooklyn, Mr. Rich Hall. Rich asked me for a one-box space machine that would satisfy his fuzz and delay needs, and the one restriction was that it needed to be sparkly orange. I like those kind of orders!

The front end of this guy is the basic fuzz. Its just such a perfect fuzz-tone and its small, one-knob, and hassle-free. Perfect for a combo pedal like this. The left switch and left-most knob control the fuzz. That feeds a standard analog delay circuit which is controlled by the right switch and the right-most three knobs (delay, blend and feedback). You can use the effects independently and they're great as-is or use em together to blast off to planet facemelter!

Season in the abyss.

2011-02-10T16:01:00.000-05:00

I have no idea what's going on right now but people want delays! Maybe its the cold weather? All I know is that i've got requests for 4 delays right now, and another one in limbo that I havent committed to yet. DELAY SEASON.

This particular analog delay is an old build from when I was testing prototype boards for a fellow builder before they went into production. Its based off of the old Way Huge Aqua Puss. Its a great sounding delay but they also get a lot more stupid with addition of some mods, and man do I like stupid.

The unit in question here is a pretty standard analog delay topography with control for delay length, blend between wet and dry signals, and feedback (how much the delayed signal feeds back into the circuit for repeating, decaying, delays). When the feedback is turned down you get just one delay, but as you turn it up you get multiples like you're yelling "echo" into the grand canyon. Turn it up even more and the circuit starts to freak out because its becoming a closed loop that just wants to repeat upon itself infinitely....and thats where it gets FUN. But its also totally not fun needing to kneel down while you're rocking out to turn the feedback knob. Solution? A footswitch. One switch is the standard on-off switch and the other is a momentary switch which dimes the feedback when youre pressing it down, and sends the thing into oscillation heaven. KICK. ASS.

More mods to come on future builds....

Grimace-purple wrong mod.

2011-02-08T12:53:00.000-05:00

This is another one of my Wrong Modulators for JC Rodriguez (Sohns, Scholars and Thieves) from San Antonio. The circuit is identical to ones ive built and posted about before but the box on this one is especially cool. Its a purple that I could only describe as GRIMACE purple. Its topped off with a bright blue LED, and the thing just looks so tuff.

Respect the muff.

2011-02-03T16:05:00.000-05:00

I realized that some previous posts might have come off like I was talking shit on the venerable old Big Muff, and thats just not true at all. Its such a widely used fuzz that sometimes people need alternatives, but its still one of my favorites and has been since I got my first one in 1997.

My first foray into the world of Big Muffs was the "russian green" muff produced by Sovtek, and it blew my mind. Years later and i've played or cloned every variation of the Big Muff and the russian green is still my favorite. This is a faithful reproduction of the russian green that was built for Evan Craig.

As soon as I was done building this one I was so stoked on how awesome it sounded that I immediately build another one on the premise that sooner or later someone would need one. A few weeks later my buddy Bryce (Colonel Records) picked it up as a Christmas gift for his brother, Aidan. Here it is, in slightly smaller packaging:

Championship grinder.

2011-02-03T11:15:00.000-05:00

This was a fun little project. I learned that Hammond makes these enclosures with an optional CAGE TOP!!! How cool is that? Its like they're practically begging you to build a Vox Night Train or an Orange Tiny Terror or the equivalent. Well I decided to take that down a notch and try an ultra simple tone machine: the Fender 5C1 Champ.

The 5C1 Champ was an early-ish tweed Fender that made its debut in 1953. These early models used an octal 6SJ7 grid-leak biased preamp tube (later replaced with a cathode biased 12AX7), and I had heard about the sweet sounding front end that these had and was ultimately curious about the inherent LaGrange-y-ness of the circuit (uh huh huh huh huh). The results were as sweet as promised. Its a different kind of breakup than other amps....a bit more smooth and compressed feeling. Kind of blues-y, but it does rock really well also. It sounds positively whipass plugged into my Sunn 4x15 (dont ask).

These photo are early ones from when I was testing the amp with a solid-state rectifier (the copper tube) which I have since replaced with a NOS RCA 5Y3. The power tube in the center is a 6V6 and the 6SJ7 is on the right. The 6SJ7 is a metal-envelope tube instead of glass.

These enclosures also come in a bunch of different sizes. Im sure i'll be building in one of these again...and it'll be a more ambitious effort.

Bing Bong.

2011-02-02T16:28:00.000-05:00

Klon clone! For years these were THEE high demand overdrive pedal on the market, fetching hundreds of dollars to get on the year-plus waiting just to buy one, or going for even more on eBay. Now that the manufacturer stopped making them (albeit temporarily) they can go for over a grand! Holy crap. People flip their shit for this pedal and rightfully so. Its a nicely built buffered overdrive, with a good tonestack in there, but where it differs from other pedals is its huge boost potential! The thing has boost for days, which helps to drive your amp into its own distortion. That coupled with the clipping-overdrive that the pedal produces and you get into some really sweet sound natural overdrive.

This is a part-for-part exact replica of the original unit.

The basic fuzz.

2011-02-02T15:56:00.000-05:00

To quote Tommy Lee: "fffuuuucccck, bro". This pedal was built for the wonderful Matt Murillo (Jettycats, Junior Varsity, The Ka-Nives) when he asked me to make him "something". Usually whenever I get asked for just something kickass, or if i'm just putting together a pedal for a gift or something I build one of these. The circuit is simple, the controls are simple, but the sound is KILLER.

The basic circuit here is the Bazz Fuss designed by Hemmo, but I make a few part subs to get it to my liking. Its kind of Muff-y, but a bit more textured sounding. A killer fuzz, and one that sounds great on bass, as well!

Frontiers.

2011-02-01T12:07:00.000-05:00

My buddy John Adams and I have this saying: "Frontiers". It started a long time ago when John was kind of spaced out and said it to some automatic-opening doors at a Chevron station. The point is that, then and now, it has been slang for "next-level shit". This is some next-level shit.

Enter the great Erick Coleman, who must be tired of just ordering single pedals from me because this time he ordered a whole rig of matching pedals. These were based on an original couple of MKII Tonebenders that I had built, one of which Erick possesses. Three new ones in matching style have been added to the original fuzz: a boost, an overdrive, and a tremolo. None of them have LEDs (by request), none have labels, and the whole rig will drive gearheads crazy trying to figure out what each box is. Frontiers.

From left to right they are the boost (ZVEX super hard-on variant), the tremolo (modified Diaz Tremodillo), the overdrive (TS-808 tube screamer with bass-boost), the fuzz (stock MKII Tonebender).

Tres Hombres.

2011-01-31T16:13:00.000-05:00

This here is a trio of distortion boxes. The circuit was originally published in the *great* Ken Anderton book "Electronic Projects for Musicians". Later a version of it with a few minor tweaks was built by Way Huge Electronics (the original issue of them) and marketed under the model name of "Red Llama". Those now fetch somewhere around 1 zillion dollars on ebay (okay, a few hundred). Anyway the circuit is a refreshing change of topology using a CMOS hex inverter for the gain stages, and sound-wise the results are pretty damn cool. Its kind of a halfbreed....not wild enough enough to be a fuzz, not tame enough to be an overdrive. Its a good overall distortion and sonic-thickener. Its my own personal go-to whenever i just need a distortion pedal.

These three were all built and sold some time ago. Controls are volume and distortion/gain, just like any good pedal should be....

Fuzzy-clear.

2011-01-30T23:42:00.000-05:00

Ahhh....finally some fresh builds. This one was built for Doug of the great, slow, huge, earth-moving, fuzz-blast machine, Bad Dream. I'm sure that Doug has a last name, but I dont know what is is. In my phone his name is saved as "Douglass Von Shreddingham" so lets just go with that.

Doug was looking for something to replace his Big Muff. Not that there's anything wrong with Big Muff, but you know sometimes you just want to expand outward into similar but different territory. I suggested the Foxx Tone Machine and that was that. Doug wanted to go with the classic layout so I did. All of the knobs, jacks, and the octave switch are on the side, with the bypass on top. This unit is 100% true to the original with some modern touches like true-bypass switching, an LED indicator, and optional AC power jack. This circuit absolutely SMOKES. Doug loved it through his rig (a cranked plexi or two) and said "its so clear and fuzzy". Seems like an oxymoron but whatever.....fuzz forth!

Benergy

2011-01-27T17:13:00.000-05:00

Ahhh yet another old build. I've really gotta start getting off my ass and building more shit so that I have new and interesting topics to talk about. Anyway, this is a build that I did awhile ago for Mr. Ben Murphy (Bright Men of Learning, not enough other bands). Ben came to me with a simple request:

Can you make me a stupid pedal? Something farty? Maybe some sort of octave-fuzz or something? It should sound like something's seriously wrong with it. Everything I own sounds too "nice".

So after some messing with an initial prototype, i built this thing for him called the Benergy. The original design is based off of some parts of the Mid-Fi Peace Gun circuit, with some tweaks here and there. The sound is bright and fuzzy, kinda spittle-buzzy here and there, with an almost ring-modulator-like resonance. Ben put it up next to some boutique Fulltone fuzzes and called the comparison "hilariously awesome". Controls are frequency and resonance, and the color scheme is white on white per request from the owner!

Lawyer blues.

2011-01-16T15:52:00.000-05:00

Tube Screamers! I *hate* Stevie Ray Vaughn and it makes me want to hate these pedals, too, but I cant stay mad at you, Tube Screamer....you totally rule.

This is spot-on recreating of the TS-808 classic. The buffers have been left in, it uses a new production 4558 chip, and man does it kick ass. These pedals are kind of subtle compared to a lot of others. There's not a huge amount of boost, and there's also not a huge amount of squishy overdrive.....there's just enough.

Orange droolius.

2011-01-13T17:25:00.000-05:00

This is a pretty standard JFET type of booster which came about as an accident. I had been making one specific tremolo for a few people (Erick Coleman, Will Adams) who, while they liked the tremolo, seemed more a fan of the boost/preamp that it gave then the actual tremolo effect. That isnt really a new phenomenon, though......EVH was known for running through the pre-amp of an echoplex without any echo effect just for some boost.

So at the request of Erick I isolated out the input gain stage, made some small mods to it, and built it as a standalone boost. Per the man himself it sounds like "Link Wray in a box". Thats a lot of hairdo for such a small pedal.

Erick's was orange and he named it the Orange Droolius, which sounds like a keeper to me.

Kustom klipper.

2011-01-13T16:05:00.000-05:00

This is a custom overdrive built for master horsetradesman Erick Coleman. Its a standard diode-clipper type of overdrive; the same mechanism used in pretty much EVERY overdrive ever made from Klon to Tubescreamer to Guv'nor to Rat. This particular one is based on the most simple of those clipper circuits, the old Electra Distortion. It has a single transistor providing the gain, and then switchable diode pairs which clip the signal for the overdrive effect. Each switch controls the switching diode in one direction, and switches between a silicon diode, no diode, or a germanium diode. This allows Erick to to jump around between a lot of clipping, a little clipping, no clipping, and any asymmetrical variety in between that suits his ears. Pretty dang cool. The controls here are gain and output volume

Ampin.

2011-01-13T12:44:00.000-05:00

This is also old news but worth a post. Not my first amp build, certainly not my last, but one of my favorites that i've done. The circuit here is a basic one: the Fender 5E3 Tweed Deluxe. So many classics were recorded through one of these and so many greats love them (Billy Gibbons, Neil Young, Mike Campbell, etc)

For this amp the power section has been doubled to provide around twice the output (~25watts). A few other mods were also made to tailor the circuit to my liking. Black tolex with a brown faceplate and oxblood grill. Most of the hardware came as a packaged kit from Weber, but a number of substitutions have been made for better parts. Tubes are GZ34 rectifier, 4 6V6Ss, 12AX7, and a 12AY7.

My use of ellipses is abysmal.

2011-01-13T11:07:00.000-05:00

This one was made for long-time Mexican Roy Mata of Black Congress. Its a combo pedal starting with a vintage Foxx Tone Machine circuit on the right. The Tone Machine was this absolutely killer fuzz from the seventies that's always been semi-hard to come by. Gibbons used them and so did PFunk and Frampton! Its *kinda* like a big muff, but also not like a big muff all in the same and so it winds up being a kickass option for people that want that muff sound with a bit of variation. The sonic differences are that this guy has a much more flat tone stack so its not missing the mids, like a muff is known for. Also the fuzz is a bit more *fuzzy* to me...less smooth. The originals included a toggle switch to turn on a zany octave-up type of effect, but Roy didnt want that so I left it off. Following that in the chain is what else but a boost! Sometimes you just want the fuzz and sometimes you just want people to shit themselves. This one has you covered.

Post title stolen from Chester Soria!

Trio of MkII ToneBenders

2011-01-12T16:59:00.000-05:00

These are a few months old but they're worth mentioning. Three ultra-mojo clones of the original Solasound MkII Tonebender from the 60s. Each uses old-stock 2N1304 germanium transistors with mallory and sprague caps, housed in a slightly oversized 1590J enclosure. They're totally basic fuzzes but totally amazing ones at the same time (very early zepplin!). I have one, Will Adams (Lower Dens, Ka-Nives) has one, and Erick Coleman (The Speed Knobs, Saturn Missile Batteries, StewMac Trade Secrets!) has the other.

CE-2: part 2

2011-01-12T15:38:00.000-05:00

This is a pretty basic clone of the original Boss CE-2 Chorus built for hairdo-enthusiast Cley Miller of Young Mammals, Wicked Poseur, and Hamamatsu Tom and the Bareback Hell Stallions Band. Absolutely killer classic-sounding chorus out of this circuit. It has an added mod via the toggle switch which switches off the chorus modulation and leaves straight vibrato.

This is CE-2 'part 2' because its actually the second one that i've built for Cley. The first was stolen from him at a club in Houston (my first thieved pedal!). I've also built this circuit before with some tweaks for bass for Geoff of Lower Dens.

The wrong modulator.

2011-01-12T15:24:00.000-05:00

Pseudo ring modulator built for superfriend Bret Shirley of Black Congress. Uses a chip designed for use in touch tone phones to produce ring modulator-like sounds and all around weirdness. The original circuit was developed as the Logan 5 by culturejam, a user on freestompboxes.org. A few mods were made to keep volume up and noise down. The single knobs adjusts the carrier frequency meaning you can tune it to a key and while notes played in that key sound good (if not heavy as shit and organ-like), others out of key go full-on raisin cake. This is the second version of this circuit that i've built; the first was made for long-time bud Mike Foss.

The kids these days...

2011-01-12T15:09:00.000-05:00

This was a rip on the 4MS Noise Swash pedal for my Flickr friend, Evan. He requested it as he seems to do a lot of noise/glitch/electronic kind of music. I obliged, not knowing exactly what was going to come of it. When I got it built up I was honestly kinda worried because it was *too* weird. Thing was all glitching and going bonkers on its own....not what I normally like to hear in a pedal, but I gave it a shot and sent it to him. Dude loved it. Go figure.

Good lord.

2011-01-12T14:56:00.000-05:00

This build was a celebratory one. My 100th pedal, so why not make it GOLDEN? For the circuit I chose the Cornish G-2.

For those that dont know, Pete Cornish is an old (olde?) English dude that has made a name for himself making the most insanely bulletproof effects and amplification rigs for the pros. David Gilmour, Brian May, Sting, etc. all use these zillion dollar Cornish rigs. For the most part the effects were all giant multi-effects units, and everything was totally custom. More recently, though, Mr. Cornish decided he would make some effects as standalone units and sell them to the general public just like regular effects pedals (only they range from $300-750). Well the Cornish G-2 is his *fancy* version of a Big Muff (presumably made for Gilmour at some point), complete with input/output buffers and subtle parts mods. So I figured, what better way to make a fancy anniversary pedal than to choose a circuits that is just a fancy version of another circuit.

Hello Dummy....

2011-01-12T14:33:00.000-05:00

I have my first blog! Welcome to 2002, jackass.

Okay so i've been building pedals and amps for a long while now and so I figured I should start a blog to catalog all this horsecrap. Its a little late for all of it, but oh well. This will contain build reports and pics of the pedals I build, the amps I build, maybe some of the guitars i'm working on, and potentially some random stuff as well.

I'll start with my 100th pedal and work forward from there. Older stuff can be found by sorting through the flickr set here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/thetonyballs/sets/72157621551866602/