Thursday 15 May 2014

Roger Mayer Page 1

Request.  Info about the original from Roger Mayer:

In 1964 I designed my first fuzz guitar effects pedal that was used by Jimmy Page and Big Jim Sullivan and featured on many early hit records. I am pleased to announce that after 40 years this early ground breaking fuzz will be available again. It uses carefully selected germanium transistors and has the same distortion section as the original 1964 version. An added carefully tuned passive fatness control follows the distortion section and this adds fatness without messing up the guitar's detail or the distortion characteristics. It has all the features of the new Vision Series with Hard Wire and Buffered Dual Outputs and is housed in the same style of new enclosure. This reissue meets our strict guidelines of keeping the best of the old but also adding some new noteworthy modern features and we at Roger Mayer welcome you to step on to a piece of genuine history.

Page 1 Front Panel Controls

DRIVE: This sets the amount of distortion.

FATNESS: A combination circuit tailored to provide control to the overall tone depth and is not just a simple top cut circuit.

OUTPUT:The output level boost available can also be used to drive the amplifier very hard if required.







13 comments:

  1. You guys are on fire recently, really cracking layouts, thanks for all the hard work that goes into them. *Scuttles off to click on some ads*
    Cheers
    Dave

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    1. yeah, cheers Mark! i will build this after i come back from my work at sea :)

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  2. TNKS for the layout Ivlark!
    Any idea for the AC128 fHE?

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    1. No idea. Pretty much anything will work but you may want to try a few to find your sweet spot.

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  3. Any idea on what this schematic is based on? Is it some sort of a variation on a Maestro FZ with some modern changes?

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    1. This was posted by analogguru at FSB:

      [i]Basically it is an attempt to construct a Maestro Fuzztone with modern means.

      Q1 acts only as an input buffer, for this reason it doen´t matter that it is silicon.

      IC1 acts as a voltage-divider/driver for the Fuzz-part. 3,9V is a little bit higher than the 3V ued in the FZ-1 (2 batteries). I would recommend to place a cap 10µ to 100µ at the output (Pin 6) of IC1 to GND. Every OP-amp can be used here, RM seems to have in stock a lot of LM 301.

      The fuzz-part with 2 AC 128 is similar to the 2nd and 3rd transistor in a FZ-1. What the "Attack"-poti does in the Fuzztone, RM is trying to achieve with the "Drive" poti. Remarkable is the low value of the collector-resistor of Q2 with only 1k5.

      The "Fatness" is only a modified Big-Muff-Pi tone-control to vary the "annoying" fuzz-sound.

      Than we have an output buffer. Why RM didn´t use an electrolytic with 10µ and 100k to ground, nobody really knows.

      The "Millenium" should be well known, here it is realized with a P-channel FET. [/i]

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    2. So you were spot-on yes! :D

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    3. Thanksa lot.
      Will trythis out as the Fuzz Tone is among my most failed circuit of all times.

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  4. Judging by clips this doesn't sound like my FZ-1 much. An FZ-1 squelches and sputters. This seems more refined and saturated

    If you want the FZ-1 sound there isn't a substitute out there that really captures it's sound

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  5. Hi! Fatness and Drive are reversed, otherwise, you can tag it, sounds great!

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    1. Just other comment: bias. I've used not very fresh battery, measuring 8,2 volts, and biasing the output voltage of the IC at 3,9v (a TL061 by the way, no reason to get a LM301 since is only used as a voltage divider).

      As the buffers have been removed and according to Analogguru, Q1 colector should be at 7,9volts I'm afraid that using a fresh battery or power supply will get some unwanted effect on the sound.

      J.

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    2. Awesome matey thanks for verifying. I don't think that AG was saying Q1 collector should be at 7.9V, I think that was just the measurement that was taken by tcobretti when they were tracing it. And it makes sense if D1 was a 1N4001 (which is the common one in that position), then through a couple of 47R resistors that you may lose a volt off the top.

      But Q1 is just a unity gain buffer and so it shouldn't make too much difference if any to the sound. And the original has a mechanical bypass mode too which bypasses the final buffer so I think it should be ok with the full 9V.

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  6. I just finished building this.I ordered the IC from tayda they sent me the LM301AN.well after fighting with the audio signal trying to get it right i tried a different IC.I used the TL071 and bingo it works fine.So i dont know if all 10 of ny LM301AN ic's from Tayda are bad but they DO NOT work on this circuit.I hope this saves others wanting to build this circuit the headache i just went through.

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