Show your pedal guts!

[Silver Blues]

Haha yay  I should have honestly been more confident in that, both my sister and my dad love Evanescence.

[vid.sicious]

M. Spencer wrote

Where did you get those sweet glow knobs Vid Sicious?

Sorry didn't see your question there Spencer! I just sprayed the knobs with glow in the dark spray paint a few times :) as well as the enclosures.

[Travis]

I slapped together a DeArmond Square Wave based on Heath's recommendation. I was ready for some freaky fuzz madness while somehow not realizing this is pretty much a straight up Distortion + clone. As a fan of the Dist + I can't say I'm disappointed overall. It sounds great  

[Heath]

Travis wrote

I slapped together a DeArmond Square Wave based on Heath's recommendation. I was ready for some freaky fuzz madness while somehow not realizing this is pretty much a straight up Distortion + clone. As a fan of the Dist + I can't say I'm disappointed overall. It sounds great  

You know what's crazy?  The only D+ I ever built was the one with the full on mods, and whatever I did to it, it doesn't sound like this (I mean, it sounds good, but different).  And with all my worrying over the mods and toggles and all that, the basic layout similarity never even hit me.  So the entire time I've been in love with this pedal, I've actually been slobbering over what is pretty much a stock D+.  

Or maybe I just inadvertently jacked up a value or two somewhere and conjured some unexpected mojo...  I need to go back and check it.  There's just something about this pedal that's hard to describe for me.  The sound just makes me think of some early punk where the beauty was in the passion more so than the talent of the guy (or girl) playing the guitar, and this is the kind of distortion that doesn't get in the way of that, kind of endearingly snarly.  

I'm going to have to build a straight up Distortion+, intentionally (heh) and side-side them.  My OCD will not let this go

[Edit: just added...]

I had to go look at the layouts side by side because a stupid little part of my brain kept going "No!  No!  No way!!  Can't be!"

They are Identical... Not just close, but, like maybe 1n vs. 1.5n, virtually identical.  My mind is blown. Dude, I feel like one of those guys on The Gear Page...

"<insert 'new' fuzz> is the greatest most original awesome fuzz ever developed!!!!"
  "Dude, it's a BMP clone, nothing new"
"No it's not!"
  "Yes it is."
  "Yeah, it really is just a cheap clone.  I never bother with a pedal unless it costs at least $300.  That way you know you're getting quality, like my new Vertex Wah."
  "Dude, it's true."
  "You dumbass"
"Then why does mine sound way better than a BMP?"
  "Because you just paid money for it"
  "I imagine it has to do with that shitty sub $2k amp you're using.. there's no way you can really hear what you're playing on that thing. You lose all the nuances."
  "You have New Gear High, dude, wait till it wears off"
  "Because you're a dumbass"

[rocket88]

haha heath. it's not even close to the shit people say on TGP. we all know that sometimes the smallest & simplest changes can make a huge impact. if it sounds good, it sounds good. look at the schematics and/or layouts for the bjfe and bearfoot blueberry. there's like 4 differences and the tonal difference is massive.

plus, be happy that your suggestion was a good one. speaking of suggestions you really should build a little angel chorus, best chorus i've build so far. (in full disclosure i haven't built it yet)

[Heath]

rocket88 wrote

 speaking of suggestions you really should build a little angel chorus, best chorus i've build so far. (in full disclosure i haven't built it yet)

I did end up building that Glam Chorus.  After finding a mistake I made that leads me to believe I was actually soldering in my sleep, it sounds really good (I'm shocked that it worked AT ALL with the bone-headed mistakes I made...  I literally left out a 100n cap completely and then soldered a 10n cap in place of a GREEN LED!  I can't even begin to defend that...)

I really think it should be called a Choroverb or something, though.  What I do know is that I'm sticking it in a mini-amp build I'm making, as a switchable effect, and it sweetens things up so much that even through a little 6" speaker it actually sounds good.  

I'm so happy with it so far I just ordered several little Eminence 6.5" speakers to make several "cigarbox" amp for sale on the Etsy store I'm setting up, and I plan on including the glam chorus circuit in each of them.  These little suckers are going to be awesome.  I'm using a fairly simple circuit that puts out up to 3 watts (TDA7276 chip, based on a circuit from Velleman that AC_FX drew up, that I've been jonesing to do something with), keeping it simple with just a volume control (it sounds just right as-is, tone-wise, and every time I tried adding a tone circuit to it, the sound quality went to shit...), speaker-out so you can plug it into your Marshall stack (hehehe, but seriously), headphone plug with speaker cut-off, etc.  Plus, if I can keep from ham-fisting it, they look really nice as well.

[Travis]

I totally agree on the sound Heath. Endearing snarl indeed! I could leave this pedal on for hours. I'll have to do a side by side with my Dist+ build to hear if those couple small tweaks have an appreciable difference.

That cigar box amp sounds cool

[johnk]

Jfet version of a Sunn  200S preamp:

[Travis]

Really nice quality as always John! All of my files are too big to make the square holes. Do you have a particular file that you could recommend me?

Btw - the way you've done those top mounted jacks shows some really badass measuring/planning. Well done

[johnk]

I got my files from an electronics store but thse would work fine and they'te super cheap:

http://www.harborfreight.com/12-piece-needle-file-set-468.html

[Travis]

Lol $2.99 I'll give it a try thanks!

Do you draw the square first to guide your work or are you just doing it by eye?

[johnk]

Travis wrote

Lol $2.99 I'll give it a try thanks!

Do you draw the square first to guide your work or are you just doing it by eye?

I mark the center and drill a small hole. then I drill two more, one at each end. then I file to break them through to each other and final shape them by eye with a small flat file..

[Travis]

Thanks John! I'd like to get some files and give that a shot this weekend

Are you in California John?

[Beaker]

That's how I would go about it too. With a good set of files it really does not take very long at all to do this.

Harborfreight do a nice set of Diamond needle files with plastic handles for $7.99 which would be a good buy.

BTW what does the Sunn sound like John? I'm ashamed to say that even though I requested this layout, I still haven't got round to building it yet. Is it stock, or did you make any mods to it?

Looks awesome by the way!

[Beaker]

I think slide switches would look awesome on your old school style of builds Travis.

I suggest you try it out on an old scrap enclosure first, just to get the hang of it. It's not a difficult job (once you've done it a few times), and really does not take long to do, but you will probably want to have a few practice goes before trying it on a pedal that you want to sell to anyone.


Tip from an ex toolmaker: you are going to get most use out of the rectangular file and the square file. You can use the shallow V shaped file to connect the holes up if they don't quite overlap.

And make sure you centre punch the hole positions as accurately as you can so that they are all in line.

[Travis]

Thanks for the tips beaker! I'm gonna hit up harbor freight today and start hacking away. You guys are the best!

[Heath]

Here's my take on the Crimson Drive.  I don't know why, but I seem unable to take a decent picture today (and that is relative to my normal crap pictures, heh).

The finish I used ended up having a lightly textured quality to it which give a sort of satin/velvety feel to it, but which also reflects a bit in the pictures making it look worse than it actually is (it kind of looks great in person ):




Okay, so this was a while back and I was still sort of figuring out how to make things more compact and had not yet discovered itty-bitty low profile E-caps so I bent everything to the side and it's really ugly.  The germ is a GT-OC44.  It sounds fantastic and is one of my favorite dirtdevils.

[Travis]

Nice one, Heath! I don't think I've seen anyone mount an external nut DC jack like that before

[squirrels]

Mountainking Megalith. More heavy indeed.

[Travis]

Another awesome looking build Squirrels!


Here's a little circuit that I came up with on the breadboard this weekend. It's a couple JFET gain stages running into a germanium gain stage. Controls are Volume, Gain, and Treble. Sound wise it's kindof along the lines of the Crunch Box or Sonic Titan, but with all the clipping coming from the JFETs and Ge. It really slays when you hit it with a humbucker!