Different Muffs... Revelation Style

[squirrels]

I’ve built both versions of the BAT Revelation and both were great through my dirty Orange OR15 and gave me a heavy, sludgy boost. The Superbass sounded similar to the BAT Pharaoh it was derived from. Now my question is this, since Muffs don’t like dirty amps, could removing the second stage and tone stack of a Rams Head or Triangle Muff get me close to the Muff sound in front of some dirt? I was thinking of tweaking Zach’s Revelation layout to see where it might get me... or would it most likely be a waste of time and parts. Thanks

[rocket88]

not quite sure, but it sounds like a good idea. the revelation is essentially a striped down muff, so tweaking the values to match that of a different era muff is definitely an idea. you if you've got a breadboard then pop it up on the breadboard and see what happens. if you don't, you could just make a board that's all sockets so you can pop values in and out easily and get it where you want. i don't necessarily suggest that, but it's doable.

[squirrels]

I literally just finished tweaking your Superlead layout to accommodate the Violet Ram’s Head. I’ll give it a shot over the weekend. Both the Superbass and Superlead work very well with my OR15 so I’d love to see if a different Muff done like the Revelation would get me more of a traditional Muff tone with a dirty amp. It seems like the overall amount of gain in the Muff and the tone stack fight back through the OR, so I’m guessing that cutting a gain stage out and removing the tone stack may work. I have plenty of gain available with the OR but I like running the gain around half way and use pedals for different kinds of dirt. It’s a picky amp but I’ve got a few that work pretty well. I also have a Vox AC10 that I use with my pedals but I still gravitate more to my Orange. I’ll post my results when/if I can get it done.

[squirrels]

I have another idea... would it be possible to bypass the second stage or the second stage and tone stack from a pre existing layout? I have a Swollen Pickle that I like and it would be interesting to see how that worked out. 

Here’s the page with the layout: 

http://tagboardeffects.blogspot.com/2014/06/way-huge-swollen-pickle.html?m=1

I’ve built the IC version. If not I could give a modded Pickle a shot. 

[squirrels]

Could I’d be as simple as moving the 100nf cap from the base of Q3 to the base of Q4?

[squirrels]

Moving the 100nf worked but didn’t sound so great.

[squirrels]

Tweaked the Superlead layout using the Swollen Pickle schematic. I left the 100r resistor on the emitter of Q3 like the Revelations use (the LSTR and Pharaoh use other values). Plugged into my OR15 it gave me the tone I was hoping for, Muff-ish through a dirty amp. I changed Q1 to a MPSA18 like the Superbass used for a little more oomph. I also have an MPQ3904 so I was thinking of making a daughter board for it considering that I felt the MPQ sounded better than the BJTs in the Swollen Pickle. I’ll post the changes I made later on. Thanks for the layout Zach.

[Silver Blues]

You could also take out the first pair of clipping diodes from the Muff circuit, this is a common mod to make the distortion less nasty (e.g. for bass) and might do something nice here.

[squirrels]

That’s an idea. I liked how the Pharaoh utilized it and switched them out on a few other Muffs. Could be interesting.

[Stymie13]

This is definitely one of my favorite boosts for a dirty amp. Another very cool addition to this circuit is an input cap blend. A pot between a 10n and 10uF into the first stage effectively fine tunes the voice to different guitars/pickups. You can really tighten it up with a bit more crunch or thicken it up for a much fatter tone.

[squirrels]

The changes to Pickle the Revelation Superlead were:

15k resistor to the base of q2 to 10k.
15k on top right to 10k.
15k Q3 collector resistor to 10k

560pf caps to 470pf.
100nf caps to 1uf.

Q1: MPSA18
Q2-3: 2N3904

I’m going to try a daughter board with an MPQ3904 and maybe a MPSA12 in Q1.

[squirrels]

The MPQ3904 works best with it. More “pickled” sounding but still sounds like my amp. Oranges are finicky with a lot of pedals. I really like the OR15’s natural tone but I want to cover more ground with it. I’m pretty much there, I think. I would definitely encourage anyone that has a picky dirty amp to try “Revelating” a Big Muff or build either Revelation.

[squirrels]

The change I would love to make is to see if I could make it a little more mid scooped. I like Muffs with the tone control in the middle but I guess without the tone stack it’s impossible, right?