Here's a collection of vero (stripboard) and tagboard guitar and bass effect layouts that we have put together covering many classic and popular effects in growing numbers. Many of these have been posted on freestompboxes.org, so check that site out for great discussions on building your own effect pedals. Enjoy the builds and please also visit us on Facebook and Twitter
As requested on the forum, this is the original version of The Dane based on schematics found on one of the effect PCB sites. A Drive only version was requested so I've done this on two separate boards for Drive and Boost, each with their own independant supply filtering and Vref components. If you want to build the whole thing you can either do it on two boards as shown, or it should be easy to adapt to a single board, and you could even potentially make them a bit smaller by removing the duplicated filtering and Vref parts.
I recall reading how most of the Mudhoney DIY builds were just not sounding right.. Recently re-traced on FSB by Kasper, from his V1.1 version of the pedal - there may have been a fault with the schematics that previously floated around the web. When i saw this, i thought "the switch shouldn't work like that".. But it seems like it really does, and with this configuration, instead of the Ruetz-style mods on the Rat, one may finally get that Mudhoney (err.. tuned Rat?) tone out from a stripboard. There are the BJT transistor buffers in place to keep the topology close to an idol, but obviously the electronic switching is removed to accomodate true bypass. The oldee PSG demo may look outdated today, but it does not sound bad. And hey! It starts with a Dinosaur Jr riff with the pedal!
..And there's been slight development. This V2 of the layout incorporates 47R CLR for power supply and a 10K pulldown at the output as on Kasper's later revision of the schem. Making this now verbatim with the original. I doubt it'll sound any different from the slightly smaller layout above. But for the sake of completeness.. Here's a layout again as revision 2.
2023. How the heck are we still alive.. No matter. Let's do another layout or two. This time, another nice, loud little circuit from Dylan159's Unrealeased Circuits - From the source: Boot Fuzz. I found this simple old-school microphone preamp, and noticed the similarity with the Fuzz Face, also claimed to be based around a microphone preamp, but in this case the second stage is an emitter follower bootstrapping the load of the first for big gains. So I thought why not fuzzing it up by increasing the gain? This ends up being similar to an Escobedo circuit, but with a different, more stable biasing.
Someone mentioned that the circuit in an earlier post would have possibly been an inspiration for this one. Not sure if i share the sentiment, since that 80's japanese design and this have basically, or in quite broad terms, just the gain pot method in common with each other.
Anyway. Quite a few people seem to lke this ultra-cheap OD. And what's not to like. There's a nice, loud clipping amp followed by tuned TS-style tone control. Not that complicated, but sure does sound nice.
Traced on FSB by Asbestosaurus, this circuit looks at a first glance a bit like OD250/Dist+, but no. And the Sense control makes this quite interesting. I built my layout version one, but this is redrawn to make it better.. Anyway, nice to see something cool done to a single opamp drive topology.
Traced by GratefulEight, this overdrive seems like a circuit worth to try out.
From the source: The Earth Drive is the ultimate boost/overdrive pedal, designed to
retain your instrument's natural character while providing an organic,
full-bodied, yet transparent sound.
Use the Earth Drive as a
clean boost to add warmth and smoothing, or turn up the drive knob and
get a wide spectrum of overdrive harmonics and singing sustain. The
Earth Drive has a huge range of boost control with its volume knob,
while the tone knob helps you perfectly dial in the treble response.
Whether
you play bass, pedal-steel, electric piano, electric guitar, organ,
whatever, the Earth Drive is quite possibly the most useful and
versatile drive pedal you've ever heard.
Nice, small and has room for tweaking - i just love to do these modern, super cheap china circuits.. Layout is according to fsb-trace by CheapPedaCollector - who does amazing job with pedals like this one.
From Dylan159's Unreleased circuits on FSB: I'm not done with fuzz faces it seems. This one's goal is to keep all the classic cranked gain tones while making the ill-treated gain knob more useful. This is accomplished by moving the gain control to the first stage. When maxed, you have a classic, low input impedance, high gain fuzz face, because the emitter is effectively grounded. At low gain, the input impedance rises to something close to 200k or more, hopefully giving an interesting sound without the usual dulling that happens. Last but not least, this one doesn't need trimming! the emitter resistor assures predictable bias even with widely differing beta. You can still make it adjustable if you like to mess with it. Care has been taken to avoid blocking, since we're adding capacitors. With these values, blocking is roughly the same as with the original.
Update: Oops. There was a cut missing from the fuzz 3 + 100µ cap.. 8.12.2022, now fixed... and verified.
Hi yall. Noticed a week or so back that it's been exactly ten years since my first post here. To celebrate the occasion, i thought i'd post something. There's been a number of slower years along the way, but so it goes. Life has it's ups and downs. To quote one of the more interesting british bands i've found in recent years: "It's alright now. Not what you hoped for, but that's ok. Teenage hopes are never less than perfect anyway."
Now for the layout. There had been a trace up on FSB for years and it seemed a bit wonky on couple of details. Vitalii checked his unit out and there were a couple of errors on that old trace. His new trace seems to be spot on. Now, this probably won't be the low-parts-count / easy build alternative for HM-2 style sounds, but this may still be nice 1590B-sized build with enough distorion. There's also room for tweaking. For examble, one could sub one or even both clipping diode pairs for LEDs or Schottkys or use a on/off/on switch for changing them on the fly. Hi/Lo gyrator controls seem to be quite effective as well. I bet this will be a fun distortion build with no special parts required.
Sadly, no youtube demos to be found.. Should you build one of these and a make a demo? ...So i could post it up?
There was a great post from Grey Bench on FSB, tracing this ten year old Stafford Maxon circuit that i found interesting back in a day, but couldn't source a schematic back then. This is per original, using only a half of a dual opamp and utilizing a 12x21 board.
From America's Pedal: DOD introduced the Corrosion distortion pedal (FX70C) in mid-1997. With basically the same circuit as the FX70 Metal X, the Corrosion featured a heavily oxidized metal finish and no paint except red (1997-98) or black (1999) graphics near the control knobs; the first version with red graphics appears to have been more rare. In 1999 the final version with black graphics was introduced, with the model name in a two-tone box to match the appearance of the final series of DOD pedals. However, the Corrosion did not use the same casing or switch, and may have been revived to profitably use up the last remaining second-series parts. It is unclear if either version of the Corrosion was ever featured in DOD advertising or catalogs, but because of its raw, unfinished appearance, sales were probably slower than the Metal X. The Corrosion was discontinued when production of all FX-series pedals officially shifted to China in late 1999.
Recently traced at FSB by VitaliiBobrov, i find this very interesting. Discrete opamp overdrive, that leaves a lot of room for tweaking and modding. Sounds pretty great even as it is.
There are never too many discrete opamp designs...
/edit - There was an error on the gain pot label. That's now fixed. Also, the telpod-brand pots on the origal unit use A for linear and B for log tapers. So you should use log pots for gain and tone. Anyway. This is verified.
Simble Overdrive has a natural organic tone, unsurpassable touch
sensitivity, sweet tube-like compression and built in inspiration. This
natural sounding pedal works as a clean boost, ”on the edge” crunch, or a
sweet singing overdrive, always retaining the tone of your prized
guitar.
The Simble pedal is happy with either single coil pickups or
humbuckers and thanks to the pedals wide bandwidth also works great with
bass!
The Hizumitas was designed for the one and only guitar sorceress, Wata,
from the legendary band, Boris! We could not be more excited to have the
honor of working with such an iconic legend known for her crushing
riffs and mind-melting leads. The Hizumitas is a faithful sonic
recreation of her go-to distortion which has been a staple of her tone
for many years: the Elk BM Sustainar.
Despite the claims it's not a 1:1 clone of the original, as there are some changes, but who doesn't love a BMP variant. The only change from the schematic is I included a polarity protection diode and 100uF filtering cap in place of a 100r resistor from +9V to the power rail. If you want to include it swap out D3 for a standing 100r resistor. Build on fellow followers of the fuzz.
Catalinbread has released two versions of the Karma Suture, one germanium and one silicon based. Both at their hearts are simply a modified Harmonic Percolator. I think Catalinbread described it best on their site:
A bubbling cauldron of even-order harmonics!
The only change I made in the layout from the schematic is I added a 100uF cap from power to ground to assist in power filtering. Schematic can be found here. Enjoy my fellow fuzzheads.
An out of production EQD overdrive that's based on the Distortion+.
From the source:
The White Light Overdrive is based on vintage overdrives that defined the sounds of classic hard rock. This vintage voiced stompbox is similar to a vintage DOD 250 or MXR Distortion+, but don’t mistake it for a direct clone of these OD’s of yesteryear. The White Light gives total control over the voice of the dirt along with a modern presence that is both dynamic and responsive to your playing. The Weight control allows you to adjust the saturation and low end, giving you plenty of tonal shaping options. The White Light Overdrive doesn’t discriminate – it likes both humbuckers and single coils, and will add some real 70′s grit to your tone. The Compression switch lets you choose between an open voiced overdrive with more high-mids and bite, or more compression with less bit and flatter mid-range.
Controls
Gain: Controls the amount of distortion.
Weight: A multi-functional control, allows the level of saturation, bass response and the over all feel of the device to be altered.
Level: Controls the output.
Compression Switch: Less= Open w/ more high-mids and bite. More= Crunchy and compressed with a bit less bite and more flat mids.
Been awhile since a new post on the main site. Life can get in the way, but here's a new one. Keep an eye out for more, we still here and going strong.
From the Source:
Descended from the Honey Bee, this one is
capable of more dynamic dirt and quicker and thicker honey. If that’s
what you’re after, the Beest can help.
The Honey
Beest is an extension of the classic Honey Bee, adding saturation and
treble to a much loved design. The heart of the Beest is the addition of
a pregain booster controlled by the Pregain knob. The pregain booster
is not a simple linear booster, but has an intentional upper mid and
treble accent that lets you mix the two gain stages to get just the
right saturation and treble. The Nature and Pregain knobs make a
wide-ranging EQ section. The Drive
and Pregain knobs give full control of the distortion saturation and
compression. This also makes the “big bottom” part of the Nature control
more useful. Turning the Nature knob full left and the Pregain full
right creates a full range overdrive…sort of like if you’ve got a
50-watt 4×12 Supro.
In October 2003, Dan Coggins (formerly of Lovetone) released his first
commercial pedal under the Dinosaural brand, called the Tube Bender.
His design goal was to make something that was sort of a tonal hybrid of
the Tone Bender and Tube Screamer, hence the name. And honestly, having
listened to it, I’m not sure there’s a better way to describe it.
He only made around 140 of them between 2003 and 2007, but many of
them were snatched up by musicians and producers in the UK. So while
they’re exceedingly rare, you’ve most likely heard it.
I added a mod from the AION Wyvern Silicon Drive of a second position to the Tone Shift switch that’s in-between the flat and scoop modes. I've included the hfe readings from an original pedal as per Aion's trace, so you can try different transistors with similar gains.
It's so rare I couldn't find a demo of it, but I think you get the gist of what it should sound like.
Long story short, YATS. It's a nice sounding TS variant.
From the source:
Plumes is a unique, all-analog approach to a classic tube-like
overdrive circuit offering 3 different clipping voices, loads of
headroom and almost three-dimensional clarity that will push your amp
over the edge. The reimagined tone control is finely tuned to sculpt low
end, clear top end, and focus midrange with blooming sustain.
Plumes is an overdrive based around that classically overdone tube-like circuit you all know, and amps crave. While this particular circuit has been done to death, we here at EarthQuaker Devices brand of special effects pedals think the Plumes offers an original take on the old, tired dead horse everyone loves to beat on. You can’t get enough of it, so we are giving you some more. Doctor’s orders and what not….
For starters, we’ve done away with the sacred 4558 IC and the classic BJT transistor buffers and replaced them with JFET operational amplifiers and raised the input impedance to nearly 10 megaohms! This offers lower noise, better signal integrity and more chime in the high end. We power this OpAmp by taking the 9v input and internally converting it to +/- 9v to give it more headroom. The end result is a more three-dimensional tone with added clarity that really pushes a nice tube amp over the edge. You might notice how those badass leads you’re always ripping will blast over those awful, no good cymbals your drummer is constantly bashing around on. It sounds like diamonds…a million f**king diamonds!
We’ve also added three different clipping options for your consideration. Mode 1 is symmetrical clipping utilizing a pair of light emitting diodes. This is the crunchiest setting the Plumes has to offer. When played through a clean amp, it’ll deliver a reasonable facsimile of that classic black and gold British valve amp tone. If you already set your amp dirty, using this mode will make it filthy. Mode 2 is clean boost mode. This eliminates the soft clipping diodes altogether and leaves you with straight OpAmp drive. This is perfect for pushing your clean tone out in front or driving the preamp of an already overdriven amp into tasteful breakup territory. Mode 3 is an asymmetrical silicon diode arrangement similar to the stock screamer but with more output and clean clarity; the tone some people describe as “transparent”. It’s almost as if your clean tone is blended in with a slightly less clean tone, ya know? Using this mode gives a warmer low-end response and lower output. It’s less hard on your amp and your ears. It’s a classic pleasant tone the whole band can enjoy.
Not enough for you? We’ve also improved the way the classic tone control operates while still leaving it familiar enough to keep you warm and comfortable. It’s still a safe space, no worries in here. It’s now useful through the whole range. The low end is big and clear, and the high end is bright and cutting without killing the mids. Just the right amount of tonal tickling to excite those ear drums yet still give that familiar mid-heavy drive.
