Boob Tube V1.5

There have been a few requests for tube based pedals and this is one I did previously.  Based around JuanSolo's 12V Boob Tube which is a Valvecaster variant, but here with a 33 - 40V supply via a charge pump.  Make sure you choose appropriate rated capacitors for the voltage.  This is verified and apparently sounds great.

Here's the tagboard layout:

And here's a charge pump, if you supply it with 12V you should get close to 40V from the 33V output point.  The ICL7660S can accept a 12V supply but that's the maximum for that IC, but you can't use the MAX1044 at 12V.

If you want to supply the charge pump with 9V and so avoid using a 12V adapter, you could use a 12V regulator off the 17V rail to provide the 12V required for the heater, or maybe even a voltage divider from the 25V rail.  In this instance you would only get around 33V for the plates though.

Here's the pedal built up and looking very nice, built by candletears7:

Catalinbread DLS

Manufacturers info:

The Dirty Little Secret is something we at Catalinbread have been harboring for quite a long time now and we’re finally ready after months of testing and refining to spill the beans...

In essence, the DLS is a ‘foundation’ pedal – a sonic platform to build the rest of your sound upon. It reacts to your playing dynamics and respects the character of your guitar’s pickups just like the classic British amplifiers it emulates. Use it to set your base crunch rhythm sound into a clean amp, roll your guitar’s volume back for cleans. Notice how treble boosters sound like shards of brittle glass or how fuzzes sound cheesy & thin into clean amps? The DLS seamlessly integrates treble boosters and fuzzes with clean low volume amps, delivering a thick cranked sound at reasonable volume levels.

What is surprising to people experiencing the DLS for the first time is that we’ve managed to capture the same dynamic interaction felt between a player and an amp but in a pedal. The DLS cleans up with light picking attack and volume knob changes – it reacts in the same way as those amplifiers do. It crunches when you hit it hard, cleans up when you play softly, and has that punchy cabinet ‘air movement’ thing happening even at low volume levels. By the same token the DLS respects your guitar’s characteristics. The result doesn’t sound like a typical ‘amp in a box’ pedal because it doesn’t feel like you’re playing a pedal – it feels like an amp.

The controls are simple and effective – Loudness governs output, Tone morphs from smooth and fat to crunchy and cutting, Gain goes from clean and clear to full crunch with harmonics, and the Rock/Rawk switch selects 60s - 70s JTM/JMP sounds (Rock) or ‘80s JCM tones (Rawk).

Since the DLS was designed to emulate two classic British amplifiers, let’s get into each mode setting and what they have to offer in variety of sounds.
         
Rock Mode:
This is your classic 60s - 70s rock sound. Chords are crunchy with lots of string definition and punch; single string playing is more clean than hairy and sounds clear and articulate. Picking dynamics are very apparent since there isn’t a ton of gain compressing your signal. The lowend “cabinet” resonance is at your chest, loose but NOT flabby.

Rawk Mode:
In Rawk mode, you’ll notice more gain and a more focused response – chords are thick, single strings have more smoothness and harmonic content. The cabinet feel is still there - tighter and more immediate. It’s quicker to decay into controlled harmonic feedback too.


Another aspect of the pedal we put a lot of thought into was how it reacts to different power supplies. There are significant differences to be had in tone and playing feel response based on what voltage is used – just like if you were running your amp with a Variac. Running the DLS at 18 volts, you’ll experience lots of dynamic movement happening – Kerrang! - there is a resonance to the sound giving the impression that you are playing through a 4x12 cabinet. At 18V you will get quite a bit more output than at 9V. At 9 volts, the pick attack is a bit more soft and smooth than running it at 18v but there is still plenty of punch and articulation. Using a battery, you’ll get a spongier playing feel and creamier sound.

We’re really proud of this pedal – it took months of critical listening to voice it just right and we think we’ve nailed it with the DLS. We hope it inspires you to do what you do best – make our music!

Video of Geiri's build:

Catalinbread Formula No 5

Manufacturers info:

The Formula № 5 was inspired by old tweed amps, most notably the 5E3 circuit. The character of the 5E3 is very unique. It has very minimal power filtering, low plate voltages, elemental tone stack, and does next to nothing to control the low end between gain stages, not to mention the under-rated output transformer and speaker. The entire system runs inefficiently resulting in a loose bass, greasy mids, cutting treble, and incredible grit – none of these qualities were ideal or intentional back in the day. In spite of this, over the past five decades the amp inspired some of the coolest, most sought after guitar tones ever recorded.

We’ve captured the unique qualities of these amps in the Formula № 5. For this circuit we felt cascaded JFET gainstages yielded the best result. They have a softer sound than MOSFETs. JFETs also have much more natural attack/decay than diode clipped rigs which are pingy on the attack and fizzy on the decay. We chose capacitor types that enhanced the midrange and burnished the treble.

This versions has been modified slightly to make one of the stock resistors switchable.  With the 2M2 in circuit you have "Formula No 5 mode", with it removed you have higher gain "More mode".

Box of Hall Reverb - culturejam

A nice little Belton Brick reverb build here.  As described by cj:

This one is pretty simple. It's the new smaller Belton/Accutronics brick and a quad op amp, a Reverb Mix control and a tone control I'm calling "Dampen". It's a dead-simple low-pass filter right off the brick's output (or rather, one of the outputs) in parallel with a fixed cap to ground. I got that little idea from earthones' suggestion of a tone control for the 2399 reverb I did. (credit where due!) I'd say this is about 75% similar to the application note, but with the added tone control, slightly different filtering, and buffered VREF.

I've tried this with the Medium and Long decay bricks. The Long can definitely get some cool ambient spacy sounds going on. And with the tone control at min, it's really bright (either brick type). The only difference I can hear is the decay time.

Circuit is verified and sounds pretty damn good.

Demo by Geiri:

You can get the Belton bricks from Musikding here.  I'd suggest going for the BTDR-2H because it's smaller, but have included a layout for the older BTDR-1H bricks as well, just in case someone has one they want to use.

Layout for BTDR-2H bricks:

and one for the older BTDR-1H bricks:

 

It seems to be very popular so here's the Box of Hall - Heavenwithin modded version.

Ibanez OD850 - V3

Requested.  This is a slightly modified Triangle clone that some others may also be interested in.  The original used buffered bypass and FET switching but this has removed those components and is designed to be used with external mechanical bypass switching of some description such as a 3PDT stomp switch.

The scheme that I did this from noted 2SC1815's as the transistors, but I've got a batch of these and based on those I would imagine most people would be disappointed with their performance in this.  The datasheet lists them as 70 - 700 hfe, but mine are all on the low side, and nowhere near the 600 - 650 hfe you'd ideally want for a Triangle clone.  I'd suggest using a 2N5088/5089 or maybe a BC550C (transistors rotated 180 degrees to that shown in the layout) which should get you in the right ball park for gain.  As such the transistors shown in this have a CBE pinout, but if you want to use the 2SC1815 which are BCE, you will need to insulate the legs and twist round the base and collector.

The original schematic also showed the Tone pot to have a W taper, but these aren't very common so I'd suggest using a linear pot as in most Muffs.

Greeny's Vero Build Guide

A number of people have asked me to do a build guide for one of these effects, but I noticed the other day that one of the guys here (timmy) had already done a very nice one which was posted on the Ultimate Guitar forum, so I asked Tim whether we could use it here and he was happy to oblige.  So many thanks for this Tim, it's a great guide and should visually answer a lot of questions some people may have when trying build up these effects.

It may be useful to print this out for cross reference when following the guide:

---

Daddy, where do baby pedals come from?

Well for me, this is where. My bench. Thought i'd take some photo's of a build and show the world how i build shit.  Here we go!

Start off with this bad boy here. Vero board slab bought from Tayda Electronics.

Once you know what pedal you wanna build you find/make a layout blablahblah. I'm making a Menatone Red Snapper with IvIark's layout.

I cut it down to size and file the edges (cosmetic reasons..)

I then mark out for the trace cuts and drill a hole to start the cut.

I then grab a bigger drill bit and cut the traces by hand.

Then i add the jumpers in.

And boom, we have a board ready for components!

   
Okay so now that we have the board ready, i add components.  
I start with resistors cause they are the shortest in height. I use RN55's cause they are killer.

Then diodes. Used 1n4001's cause i love em.

I then use an IC. This is an old school JRC4558.

Then come the caps. I use Phillips ones for pedals like this for size reasons. Theres also a Silver Mica in there.

Then polarised caps. I LOVE KEMET ONES (the one that looks like a bullet) CAUSE THEY LOOK SIIIICK!

And there we have a populated board!

Now to wire it into an enclosure..
Here's one i prepared earlier!

Fill it with the required parts.

Now for wiring. I start normally with the LED and grounding.

Then input and output jacks.

Then more power/switch wiring..

Looks kinda messy at this stage. but dont panic! I then add the circuit in last!

All done!

Works a treat first time

Jordan Vico Vibe

Actually a very nice sounding tremolo rather than the effect the name suggests.  A clone of this is currently being sold by a company called Mahoney and they wrote:   

In the late 60's, Jordan offered an incredible sounding tremolo unit that was housed in the plug-in style box like the Bosstone. There were less than 100 of these rare units ever produced.

Some people have mentioned a volume drop when the pedal is engaged, so it may be worth building this in a box with a clean boost of some sort pushing it, so you have more control over the level.

This is a demo of the Mahoney copy which will give you a good idea how this sounds:

Catalinbread WIIO

Manufacturer's info about the original:

Sheer raw power. Dynamics that feel like a roundhouse kick to the chest. Incredibly responsive clean up with the flick of the wrist. This is the WIIO.

The WIIO is an overdrive inspired by the powerfully unforgiving British amps from the ‘70s. Its all right there at your fingertips - your picking attack determines how much gain is delivered to the speakers. There is none of the typical compression found in most other overdrives to hide behind or to soften the blow - this is brass knuckle to the jaw type sonic impact we‘re talking here - you literally feel as though you plugged straight into the power section.

Like the amps, the WIIO has a wide freq spread so if your amp can deliver you’ll be rewarded with crisp clear highs and a very full tight low end. Lower gain settings are very clean and linear - you can hear every pick stroke and fingerprint, and the headroom allows for some very rich sounds when using modulation pedals. As you crank up the Gain the breakup is aggressive, powerful, punchy, and immediate then it decays quickly to a full clean sound. The midrange bark particular to the amps on which we based the WIIO is right there too as you crank it up. This pedal cuts like a broadsword so no need to fear being lost in the fray. It respects the integrity of your pickups, and loves being slammed with other overdrives or your favorite fuzz too.

The EQ controls on the WIIO are interactive with the Gain knob - increasing the Treble will not only give you more highs but also more grit to the gain. Likewise, increasing the Bass control will not only deliver more lows but will also alter the feel and attack. Plenty of output to smack your amp into submission as well.

The whole point of the WIIO experience is the dynamic interaction between you and the pedal. It reacts immediately to your picking hand, so cleans are easily attainable just by lightening up your attack. Conversely, you can get to the raging power chord stuff just by hitting the guitar harder. Running the WIIO at full gain will give you pushed transformer-style saturation for leads as well, so in reality you can have three levels of gain available just by using your wrist and your guitar’s volume control. It was designed to be intuitive with a minimum of tweaking, freeing you to follow your inspiration to wherever it takes you.

The WIIO won’t be for everybody and we‘re cool with that - hell, Nic has the real deal 100w full stack with eight Fanes and many of us in Teh Bunker cower and lose continence when its at full bore. Its unique sonic structure is very unforgiving and due to the responsiveness allows EVERYTHING you put into it to come through. But as the players who have had the experience of playing the amps know, there are great rewards to be had once you’re able to grab hold of the reins and attempt to ride the mighty beast.Sheer raw power. Dynamics that feel like a roundhouse kick to the chest. Incredibly responsive clean up with the flick of the wrist. This is the WIIO.

The WIIO is an overdrive inspired by the powerfully unforgiving British amps from the ‘70s. Its all right there at your fingertips - your picking attack determines how much gain is delivered to the speakers. There is none of the typical compression found in most other overdrives to hide behind or to soften the blow - this is brass knuckle to the jaw type sonic impact we‘re talking here - you literally feel as though you plugged straight into the power section.

Like the amps, the WIIO has a wide freq spread so if your amp can deliver you’ll be rewarded with crisp clear highs and a very full tight low end. Lower gain settings are very clean and linear - you can hear every pick stroke and fingerprint, and the headroom allows for some very rich sounds when using modulation pedals. As you crank up the Gain the breakup is aggressive, powerful, punchy, and immediate then it decays quickly to a full clean sound. The midrange bark particular to the amps on which we based the WIIO is right there too as you crank it up. This pedal cuts like a broadsword so no need to fear being lost in the fray. It respects the integrity of your pickups, and loves being slammed with other overdrives or your favorite fuzz too.

The EQ controls on the WIIO are interactive with the Gain knob - increasing the Treble will not only give you more highs but also more grit to the gain. Likewise, increasing the Bass control will not only deliver more lows but will also alter the feel and attack. Plenty of output to smack your amp into submission as well.

The whole point of the WIIO experience is the dynamic interaction between you and the pedal. It reacts immediately to your picking hand, so cleans are easily attainable just by lightening up your attack. Conversely, you can get to the raging power chord stuff just by hitting the guitar harder. Running the WIIO at full gain will give you pushed transformer-style saturation for leads as well, so in reality you can have three levels of gain available just by using your wrist and your guitar’s volume control. It was designed to be intuitive with a minimum of tweaking, freeing you to follow your inspiration to wherever it takes you.

The WIIO won’t be for everybody and we‘re cool with that - hell, Nic has the real deal 100w full stack with eight Fanes and many of us in Teh Bunker cower and lose continence when its at full bore. Its unique sonic structure is very unforgiving and due to the responsiveness allows EVERYTHING you put into it to come through. But as the players who have had the experience of playing the amps know, there are great rewards to be had once you’re able to grab hold of the reins and attempt to ride the mighty beast.

[24th May 2014 - new revised layout]

Catalinbread Rah

The marketing:  The Catalinbread RAH was built specifically to nail Jimmy Page's gigantic guitar tone from Led Zeppelin's legendary 1970 performance at Royal Albert Hall. At the time, in contrast to the Marshalls that he eventually came to be associated with, Page was using Hiwatt heads on stage, modified for a bit of extra gain. The resultant sound, as captured in the Royal Albert Hall concert DVD, is enormous, and the dynamic range from these high-headroom amplifiers is nearly symphonic. With the Catalinbread RAH overdrive pedal, our good friends at Catalinbread have managed to squeeze the distinctive "Jimmy Page Hiwatt" tone into a compact stompbox. Starting with their WIIO pedal as the foundation, and combining some elements of the Dirty Little Secret, Catalinbread delivers a unique overdrive pedal that will reward the player who appreciates articulation, real dynamics, and a very amp-like response. The Catalinbread RAH is an ideal foundation overdrive pedal; just set-and-forget, using your fingers and your guitar's volume knob to bring forth a spectrum of organic, blooming guitar tones.

[24th May 2014 - new revised layout]

Catalinbread Heliotrope

Info from Catalinbread about the original:

What do you call an effect that isn’t quite a Bit Crusher, or an Octave, or a Harmonizer, or a Ring Modulator, or a Lo-Fi dirt box/fuzz – but a bit of a blend of each?

Yeah – we don’t know either, so we came up with “Harmonic Pixelator”.

The Heliotrope is an "analog bit crusher" of sorts. Since there is no analog to digital conversion happening it isn't a true bit crusher, hence the name "Harmonic Pixelator". It works with guitar, bass, keyboards, etc. We designed the pedal to be intuitive and easy to use even though what it is capable of sonically is actually quite complex and varied.
         
The Heliotrope can be powered from a 9v-18v adapter or a 9v battery. At 18v you’ll notice more output volume and headroom is available.

The controls work like this:

Your instrument of choice (aka: Program Frequency) feeds the Heliotrope an input signal. From it is subtracted the Carrier Frequency. The Carrier Frequency is set by the Hi/Lo switch and the Sample Rate knob.

These are the rough ranges of the frequencies governed by the Hi/Lo switch:
Hi: 1.44kHz - 6.66kHz
Lo: 333Hz - 1.58kHz

So if the Carrier Frequency is tuned using the Hi/Lo switch and the Sample Rate knob to around 440Hz and you play a high E string at around 320Hz the output is roughly 110Hz or an A String. With a little thinking you can break down all these intervals and harmonize with the pedal - or you can just have fun and set it to an interesting resonant sound and see where it takes you.

The Resolution control determines the duty cycle or the ratio of on to off time of the Carrier Frequency. The effect of this control is somewhat like focusing the lens on a camera, you can make it as sharp or as blurry as you’d like.

Volume makes it go loud.

Gain distorts and compresses the signal. You can get a decent amount of grit and fuzz out of it for more squarewave synthy type stuff.

Enough math – let’s rock this thing!

Dunlop - Eric Johnson Signature Fuzz Face EJF1

There is an ongoing discussion on FSB about this pedal, because we know that there are some hidden surface mount components underneath the board, and so this is based on a best guess by Marc Ahlfs after some experimentation he did on the circuit.

Info from Dunlop about the original:

No one cares more about tone than Eric Johnson, and his choice for getting sweet, singing lead tones is the Eric Johnson Signature Fuzz Face. EJ worked closely with Fuzz Face guru Jeorge Tripps to create his signature pedal. It is inspired by EJ’s prized personal Fuzz Faces and is built to his incredibly strict specifications, featuring hand-selected BC183 silicon transistors (for higher gain), custom repro ’68-’69 knobs, and a vintage-style hammertone finish. The result: a beautifully dynamic, expressive, and powerful pedal. “I first heard the Fuzz Face when I was about 12 and loved playing through it,” he says. “It’s the classic tone used by Jimi Hendrix, one of my greatest influences. No other pedal gets this type of sound. It’s the pinnacle of psychedelic fuzz.”

Bearfoot Dyna Red Distortion

Info from the builder:

The Dyna Red is a classic distortion that immediatley sounds familiar. What sets the DRD apart is that it also manages to mimic the FEEL of a healthy plexibasketweaver.

While it is known for its crunchy classic  rock  distortion - it also has a  very  tasty 'just above driven' sound that really shows off its  dynamic low dirt capabilities.

the DRD can be safely used between 5 and 15 v. (lower the voltage for easier saturation and raise it to tighten up the response and add headroom)

This has been verified by muhd85:

Dallas Rangemaster

As requested.

Noisy Cricket MkII

Runoffgroove and Beavis Audio have been great resources for the DIY audio community for a long time now, offering projects and guidance which has helped many people over the years, me included.  This is Dano's take on a ROG project, a nifty little 0.5W amp that has a lot of fans out there, but with an added Bass switch for additional tone control.

Info from Beavis about the amp:

Here’s a fun Beavis Audio project that lots of people love: the noisy cricket guitar amp. I started with the runoffgroove.com ruby amp, and then added a tone control and a ‘grit’ mod. This is a great project that will give you a very sweet sounding practice amp based on the 386 lower power amp chip.

More information can be found on the Beavis Audio site here.

Added optional headphone output daughterboard.  Don't forget to use a stereo socket for the headphone output and it will need to be a plastic body type socket, so the sleeve can be isolated from ground through the box:

And a switched headphone option.  An easier way of doing this would be to feed a switched headphone socket from the daughterboard, and the signal also going through the normally closed contact to the speaker output.  Then when a plug is in the headphone socket, the speaker will be diconnected automatically.

Merlin Blencowe's One Chip Chorus

Another one of these nice little PT2399 projects to try out.  This was a from a schematic posted by Merlin Blencowe and it seems to give a nice range of vibrato and chorus sounds for such a simple design, using just the PT2399 IC and nothing else driving it. 

Clip made by Merlin (he posted that any noise was due to his recording setup and not the effect).

Yes the chips can be temperamental, but the results can be great for some of these effects.  Just don't forget to buy 10 x PT2399's and keep trying them until you find one that works :o)

Fender Blender

This layout was based on the original schematic, but here's the manufacturers info about the reissue:

There are few Fender products with as much "indie cred" as the Fender Blender. Once thought of as an overly harsh fuzz pedal, the Blender, thanks to players like Billy Corgan of Smashing Pumpkins and Kevin Shields of My Bloody Valentine, is now a coveted, and rare, vintage pedal. Like Fender have done with guitars & amps, they are reissuing this pedal to satisfy the demand that has surged past the supply on the vintage market.

The beauty of this pedal is that it does not sound like anything else on the market. It has a totally unique voice. This is a pedal made for players who want to create instead of copy. With a bit of experimentation, a player can get countless sounds out of this pedal, some that were intended and some that were not.

The Blender can be used for leads by metal players looking for an ultra-aggressive tone. This will replace other Octave/Fuzz pedals on pedalboards throughout the land

Menatone Red Snapper - 3 knob

Demo of the original 3 knob version:

Menatone Red Snapper - 4 knob

Info from the manufacturer:

The Red Snapper is the original Menatone pedal.  It debuted in 1996 to fill the need for a very open and uncompressed overdrive.  The circuit has remained essentially unchanged except for the addition of the "hi cut" control, which allows for complete control of the treble response after the overdrive.  The unique design of this control allows it to be taken completely out of the circuit when turned fully counter clockwise, thus making the circuit identical to the original three knob version.  The Red Snapper can produce anything from a clean boost to enough drive to make any amp sing.  Its overdrive character was painstakingly designed to keep your amp and guitar's illustrious tone perfectly in tact.

And an alternative version with a switch to swap between symmetrical and asymmetrical clipping.

Sola Sound Tone Bender MkIII - 3 knob

Menatone King of the Britains

Info from the Menatone about the original:

The King of the Britains is based on the famous '67-'68 plexi that was all the rage in the eighties, but, this King is all hopped up on STEROIDS.

This little beast can take you from clean to scream at a twist of its Gain, or a turn of your guitars volume knob.

Demo of the 7 knob version:

Death By Audio Supersonic Fuzz Gun

Now verified but note changes in pot lug connections from the original layout posted.  If you're going to build this then use the latest layout shown below.

Info from the makers:

Need to melt peoples brains with supersonic chaos?
Want a different sound than everyone else?

For an endless amount of full, insane, buzz sawing, jaw dropping sounds the supersonic fuzz gun can do it all.

The supersonic fuzz gun is a completely unique and huge sounding fuzz pedal. The goal of the pedal was to make a fuzz with the capability of having an immense range of great and usable fuzz sounds. The controls are completely interactive with each other to give the wielder an infinite number of great tones. There are extremely (and i mean exremely) harsh sounds available and extremely (yes i mean it again) warm sounds available. It does it all.    

Controls:
Bias - changes the overall sound of the fuzzing
Density - affects the frequency range going into the pedal
Fuzz - increases the distortion of the signal
Filter - filters out the high frequencies of the output and smooths out the insanity
Level - controls the master output volume of the pedal
Gate/oscilation - switches between a gated fuzz tone and an oscillation fuzz sound