Muff Master

[rocket88]

Since the last layout I did was good on the first try I thought I would try to build another layout. I thought this sounded interesting as an alternative to the Rangemaster.

Take directly form AMZ:
"The classic Rangemaster is thought to have been the source of some of the best tones in rock guitar, from Clapton's Beano sound to some of Brian May's singing sustain tones. While the effect is a simple one-transistor booster, locating a good quality germanium transistor to use in building a clone of the Rangemaster can be a problem. Furthermore, germanium transistors will drift in bias and gain as the temperature of the transistor changes.

If we use the basic Muffer circuit and tweak the values of a few of the components we can produce a simple booster that has a lot of the character of the Rangemaster while being more stable and built from easy to find parts. This booster is best used to overdrive the input of a tube amp or otherwise create a bright boosted response. The gain of the Muffer circuit has been reduced and input capacitor made smaller to create the proper frequency response.

Because the response of silicon transistors to overload is different from that of germaniums, the sound will not be an exact duplicate of the classic effect but it is interesting and useful nonetheless. This cheap booster provides a lot of bang for the bucks - try it out!"

Here's the Layout.

I did my best to make it as compact as I could, but I'm sure that it could be made smaller by someone with more experience/skill, and if the resistors were standing.

Here's the Schematic:

R2 - 1M
R3 - 330k
R4 - 100k
R5 - 10k
R6 - 1k
R9 - 100 ohms
R10 - 100k audio taper
C1 - 0.01uF
C2 - 1uF
C4 - 100uF
Q1 - NPN silicon transistor (2N5088, 2N3904 or similar)

[rocket88]

I took another look at this layout and tried to make it more compact, and neater. So here is V2 of the Muff Master

[IvIark]

I think the bottom lead of the 100u is on the second from bottom row instead of the bottom (I can't tell very well with DIYLC V3) but presume that was just misplaced.  Looks spot on to me otherwise mate, nice job.

These schemes are great for practise with things like this.  Check out some of the ones at Fuzz Central too

[rocket88]

It is, I edited it to make it a little clearer. What version do you use? I really want my layouts to look better, and I don't seem to have the same components for the layout like yours and Miro.

[IvIark]

I use the older V2 because I just think the results look much better and I'm used to all it's annoyances.  Miro uses V3.

I actually went into V3 before and started editing the libraries so I could add my own components which look the way I want, and so one of the next layouts I do will use V3 just to see how fluent I am with it compared to V2.  I honestly can't see me carrying on using it though.  

The only thing I dislike about V2 is you're stuck with the resolution you can see in my layouts which is pretty small, particularly on big monitors with high resolutions now.  But I still like it more

If you want to try V2 then let me know and I'll send you my library so all the items I use in my layouts are available to you too.

[johnk]

Hi IvIark,
i'd like to have your library for V2.

[rocket88]

Awesome Mark. I would really love that. Now my layouts will look like yours, and look so much better.

[IvIark]

You can get it here

I removed a lot of items from the library that I never use so you can obviously just add these to your own library, or replace your existing one completely if you prefer

[rocket88]

that's awesome. thanks Mark. question though, how do you import them? i'm using V3 and can't find how to import or create a new template. do you know where i can get V2, cause all i can find is beta for V2.

[IvIark]

Aah you can't do it.  A V2 library can only be used with V2

[rocket88]

I figured, but I can't even figure out how to create a template in v3 and can't find v2 other than beta.

[IvIark]

The beta version is the one I use.  There are a few annoyances about it like default sticky points and CTRL+x closing it down without confirmation (I've nearly thrown my computer out of the window when it has done that in the past when I was part way through a big layout I hadn't saved).  And the BOM isn't great, but I don't use that very often anyway.  But you get used to them and I much prefer it to V3, even in its beta form.