Black Arts Toneworks Black Sheep - Circuit Board Pictures Included

[rocket88]

I know there is nothing out there about this pedal yet, but figured I would make the request now to put this on the radar. On March 30th, you could order them directly from Black Arts, so I don't think anyone has it. But, damn it sounds heavy, thick, and totally fuzztastic.



Some info I've found out:
"The Black Sheep from Black Arts Toneworks is a transistor based fuzz pedal that’s mean and aggressive with plenty of thick bottom end. It features a 4-way tone knob that shapes the low-end and midrange and has plenty of attitude for riffing on the kind of doom-laden grooves for the soundtrack of the biker dude riding into the sunset on the Black Sheep’s cool looking front graphic."

[adapt]

based on a bee baa

[rocket88]

adapt. where did you find out that its based on the roland beebaa? i listed to the beebaa, but it doesn't sound as thunderous, dark, and doomy as the black sheep. did they just play around with different values to make the beebaa less trebley and such?

[adapt]

from black arts' facebook:

Black Sheep. This lil fucker is fun to play. Super heavy bottom end, can go from heavy rock fuzz to rippin crazy fuzz. Black ( it has a depth control similar to the Black Forest, 4 way selector, and instead of adding just bottom, it shaves a little bottom off and lessens the mid scoop.) Sheep ( based on a bee baa). Black Sheep because it is unlike anything else in the lineup. Mid scooped, meaty and chunky. Searing high end with hints of octave/scrambler to make the noise lovers look. Its one of those pedals that just makes ya thirsty... dig in and riff. Did i say fun?

i'm guessing they did the same thing as the forest, added some bigger caps here and there, plus the original beebaa transistors were 2sc828s i think which are notoriously kind of trebly/brittle. they probably use an mpsa18 in q1 like some of their other pedals.

[rocket88]

cool. i didn't see that on their facebook, i saw it on their site. looking at what you posted it makes sense how they came up with the name. when i listened to the beebaa it was super trebley, but nice fuzz sound. it will be nice to have it with more bass.

[adapt]

yeah, to me it looks like the input cap on the original (there's a layout on here) is a 2n2 which would make it super thin. Just up that value (and try bigger [film, not ceramic]) caps on the two transistors and it should be beefier.

[rocket88]

i've got the layout for the beebaa and it's been on my list for awhile, so i'll try to mess around with it and see what i do with it, maybe add the same rotary input cap switch from the black forest layout mark posted recently. the only thing is on the beebaa has 2 additional switches that i would want to remove, and have 3 controls - output, tone, fuzz.

[adapt]

just looked, the 2n2 cap is one of the switchable caps from the tone select switch. it switches between 2n2 and 4n7. you can remove the 4n7 cap entirely, then move the top leg of the 2n2 capacitor one row up on the layout and make it a socketable capacitor to omit that switch.

to omit the booster switch, run the input into sustain 3, and you can remove the bottom-left 6n8 capacitor, linked 10k resistor and the far right 220k resistor. someone feel free to check my work on this.

[adapt]

doesnt say anything about SW 1-6 tho...

[zerosadness]

The Black Sheep have 2N5089 on it. I've one.

[rocket88]

i broke down and bought one of these to figure out what was done differently then the normal BeeBaa. Here are the pics of the board (top and bottom), and i marked all of the caps that i could see as well as the wiring. hopefully someone will put together a nice layout for this one, cause i'm sure there is a lot more tweakability in this one. also, all the transistors are 2n5089's.




i couldn't see all of the values on the caps, 3 of them on the switch i couldn't see, and the one greenie right next to the switch, which i think is .0022uF. i think the ones on the switch from left to right are the .0022uF greenie, .010uF, .047uF, and 1uF on the end, but since they are their for switching you can sub whatever you want, and we could even make it a 6 way with even more options.

[rocket88]

ok. i know i posted this a long time ago, but i sat down and put the top and bottom images on to each other, but i'm not really that good at tracing so i figured someone who's good at it would be kind enough to get the schematic, and then i would put together a layout, and we can have another BATW pedal.