Wampler Ecstasy

Here's another great overdrive from Wampler, with a wide range of tones to choose from. It has a simple 2-band EQ and a DPDT (on-off-on) switch to go between smooth clipping, no clipping, and hard clipping.

Dan Armstrong Green Ringer

Here's another Dan Armstrong effect. It's part ring modulator (when playing chords) and part octave (when playing on the neck pickup, high on the fretboard with the guitar tone control down). For the clearest octave effect, match the diodes as closely as possible for forward voltage. It might also be worth matching the 47nF caps and the 10K and 22K resistors.

Run Off Groove Umble

The Umble is the result of Brian Tremblay's (ROG) adaption the the mythical Dumble amplifier into a FET-based distortion box. I've drawn the layout for on board right angle PCB pots and added a 1N4001 diode for polarity protection. Should fit nicely in a 1590B. Check out the ROG article for more info.

Krank Distortus Maximus

This was a request. It's another 386-based distortion, similar in theory to the DAM Sonic Titan. Transistor-based "preamp" section which is amplified by the 386 "power" section, follwed by a 3-band tone stage on the output.

Dan Armstrong Blue Clipper

Here's a quicky for your Saturday. The Blue Clipper was one of the small effects units by Dan Armstrong that plugged straight into your guitar output jack. It uses one side of a JRC4558 to produce a basic distortion effect.

Marshall ShredMaster

Here's another one from Marshall's great pedal line from the early 90s. When it was released it was considered a high gain distortion, though probably wouldn't be categorized as such today. It was made famous by Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood from Radiohead and covers more than just shredder territory.

Jen Fuzz

Jen was an Italian manufacturer in the 60s and 70s that produced their own line of effects in addition to OEM stuff for other brands like Gretsch and Vox. This fuzz effect is essentially a Fuzz Face with an emitter follower up front and clipping diodes on the output. It produces a treble-heavy fuzz with a good bit of volume. Original transistors were BC238B for Q1-2 and a BC239C for Q3. Some schematics floating around call for 2N5088s, but shoot for transistors in the 200hFE range (2N2222, 2N3904, etc). This layout should fit in a 1590A, and if you drill the enclosure right, you could board-mount the pots using long-leg right angle PCB pots (mounted from the component side).

Free the Tone HB-2 Heat Blaster

Got a request for this one. Basically a Tube Screamer with a few mods and some extra switches to cut highs and lows. The original has 2SC185 transistors, which have BCE pinout. I've laid this out for the more typical CBE pinout. Like you would in a Tube Screamer, try 2N3904, 2N5088, etc for the input and output buffers.

DAM Sonic Titan

The Sonic Titan creates amp-like distortion through the use of a JFET preamp stage, followed by LM386 power amp stage. The JFET stage creates the clipping and the LM386 amplifies the signal generated by the JFET.

Original units use a 2N3819 JFET with DGS pinout, so I've also included an layout for DSG JFETs like the J201, 2N5457, etc.

Ibanez TS9 Tube Screamer

The TS808 layout I post a while back has always bugged me. It's a real tight squeeze in a 1590B and I wanted a Tube Screamer layout with onboard pots. Well, I finally drew one up and I like this one. It's laid out for the TS9, but all it takes is 2 resistor swaps to go to TS808 specs (see the layout for info there). For board mounted pots, as per usual, right angle PCB pots can be mounted from the solder side of the board.

Skreddy Pedals Lunar Module

The Lunar Module was designed to get that Gilmore fuzz tone from Dark Side of the Moon.  It's an aggressive silicon fuzz with a wide range of tones. Got a request for this with the Pregain control as a trim pot. As the original 3-knob Lunar Module had the Pregain and Brite controls as trimmers, making a board for both is fairly easy. Transistors are BC109Cs, but BC550Cs would also work. You might want to use linear pots for the Body and Fuzz controls as some builders have had better results with those than the stock tapers.

MXR DynaComp

Here's the classic DynaComp compressor from MXR. This frequently cloned and copied effect has been an industry standard since it was introduced in the 70s. It uses the CA3080 IC, which can be a bit expensive and/or difficult to source as it is a rather obsolete chip. It might be a good idea to use tantalum capacitors in the place of the 1µ electrolytic caps for noise purposes. You can mount the pots directly to the board using either long leg right angle PCB pots or these more normal ones.

Seppuku Fuzz Overloader

Here's another Seppuku FX fuzz box. The sound is kind of in the vein of Devi Ever or Death by Audio. The texture control pans between thick overdrive and over the top fuzz. This one should fit in a 1590a. I included a daughter board for the pots to cut down on some off board wiring.

Zvex Wooly Mammoth

Looking for a Wooly Mammoth but don't want a sideways 1590b on your pedalboard? Here's the Zvex bass fuzz laid out for board-mounted right angle PCB pots.

Seppuku Octave Drone

Here's the Octave Drone from Seppuku FX. Like the Space Fuzz, it too is based on the Rambler. In fact, the Octave Drone is more than half of the Space Fuzz. This has as input switch that goes between a 4.7nf cap and a 100nf cap, much like like the Hot Silicon Tonebender. You could easily replace the switch with a B100k pot (much like the Basic Audio Scarab Deluxe), to pan between the 2 caps. You can mount the pots on the component side to have the board mounted vertically inside your enclosure if you so choose. Should fit in a 1590B without issue.

Seppuku Space Fuzz

The Space Fuzz is a a loud, in your face fuzz/octave box from Japan builder Seppuku FX. It's partially based on the Tim Escobedo Rambler, with a couple other stages thrown in (including the Bazz Fuss). It has a pretty wide range of tones and can get a little splattery at the end of sustained notes. This layout is based on original PCB traced on FSB, but tidied up and changed to include power filtering and polarity protection, and will fit in a 1590B (originals are in 1590BBs). Originals use ceramic capacitors and that's reflected in the layout as well. Seems like just about any NPN silicon transistor will work, but the 2N2222 reportedly is the quietest. As always, socket and experiment.

Edit: John K over on FSB seems to have verified this layout using 2N5088s and a LM386N-3 with very little noise. If the effect does seem loud enough, try using a 1N4148 in place of the 1N34.

G2D Morpheus

The Morpheus is a high gain distortion designed for metal players. It comes with the warning: "A hard out distortion pedal not for the faint of heart." It promises big low end and crunchy highs. Here's a demo:

The power filtering on this seems a bit extreme to me, but I've laid it out with the stock 1000µ and 220µ caps from 9v to ground, and 220µ and 22µ caps from 4.5v to ground. If you don't have some of those values on hand, try lower ones. Also, the pot numbering may have been reversed from normal on the schematic I drew this from, so be warned. 

Lovepedal COT50

Here's one of Lovepedal's many Electra Distortion variants. It's a pretty good booster and is the boost section on the Amp Eleven.

T Jauernig Electronics Luxury Drive/Boost

Here's quick on for your Friday. The Luxury Drive is a simple JFET boost circuit and is the same as the boost section of T Jauernig's Gristle King. J201s should also work just fine.

Mid-Fi Deluxe Pitch Pirate

This was a request from my friend Cody from They Remained Silent blog. The Pitch Pirate is a vibrato/chorus pedal, and the deluxe version adds a PT2399 based delay. It also has the ability to modulate over an octave as well as control the waveform of the modulator, giving you a huge range of tonal options.

Notes:
You can go the home-brew route and put a 1M LDR and LED in some shrink tubing or there should be enough space to use a VTL5C2 photocoupler. Adjust the trimmer at input till there's no unwanted distortion.

Valve WizardEntropy Chorus

Stumbled across this effect while looking for a completely different schematic. It's a low cost chorus designed by Merlin Blencowe (here's his schematic for reference), using a PT2399. It generates deep modulation and a very thick warble (here's a sound clip).

Marshall Guv'nor

The Marshall Guv'nor is one of the more highly regarded overdrive/distortion pedals of the late 80s, early 90s. With it's amp-like dynamics and a wide range of versatile tones, the Mk. I version of this pedal is still highly sought after. Many artists have used it, though Gary Moore is most associated with it, thanks to his "Still Got the Blues" album. 

You can use right angle PCB pots, mounted from the solder-side of the board if you like. It should fit nicely in a 1590B.

Analogman Sunface

The Sunface is a clone of the Dallas Arbiter Fuzz Face, with a few tweaks. First, it has a 50k trimmer at the input of the circuit so you can adjust the pregain (it works exactly like the volume pot on your guitar), second it has an external control for biasing Q2 (the Sundial). Original units use a B5k pot here, which in series with the 2.2k resistor doesn't even equal the original Fuzz Face bias resistor of 8.2k. So you might want to up that pot to a B10k.

Analogman has made both a positive ground, germanium version, and a negative ground silicon version. The germanium versions have NKT275 transistors, and the silicon version uses the BC108. The layout reflects both versions with the perf side showing positive ground, and the PCB side showing negative ground.

Lovepedal Amp Eleven

The overdrive section of the Amp Eleven as many of you might know, is pretty much a direct copy of Paul Cochrane's Timmy. The only difference (aside from a few value changes) is the Amp Eleven doesn't have the switch that adds another clipping section that's in the Timmy.

MXR Script Phase 90

The Script version of the Phase 90 is probably the holy grail of phase shifters and was the first effect released by MXR in 1973. It's probably most famous for helping create Eddie Van Halen's brown sound on the first 2 Van Halen albums. It was designed before dual op amps were really affordable, so it used 6 op amps, in addition to 4 JFETs and a PNP silicon transistor. I've wanted to do a layout for the Phase 90 for a while, but all those op amps intimidated me, so I held off till a request for it came in. I used the original MXR board as a starting point. I ended up with 2 jumpers, but original units had a 150k resistor spanning over half the board (going from the base of Q5 to pin 6 of IC5).

One of the weird things about this layout is how the JFETs are oriented. The drain and source pads are further apart than the source and gate pads because the ground fill has to go between those gaps, and this quirk is evident on the original board from MXR. I would imagine 2N5457s would work if you can't get ahold of the original 2N5952s, and a 2N3906 can be swapped for the 2N4125 if necessary. Also, if you're not a fan 741 chips, a TL061 or 071 should work fine.

ColorSound OverDriver

The OverDriver is a dynamic transparent drive that works great with a tube amp. It's essentially a massive clean booster that pushes the amp to overdriven tones. Original units from '69-'70 didn't have a master volume control, but modern versions do and it's a good addition to the circuit. (If for some reason you don't want the master volume, the Volume 3 pad becomes the Out pad.)

I've upped the power filter cap to 47µ and added polarity protection and a pulldown resistor. The original BC transistors used had BCE pinouts, but I've laid the effect out for the more common CBE pinout. Also, the BC169 transistors used for Q1 and 2 will probably be pretty difficult to source, so socket and try out some alternatives (2N3904, 2N5088, etc). Might be a tight squeeze horizontally, but it should fit in a 1590B enclosure.

Here's my build. Haven't boxed it up yet, but I tested it and it seems to work. I used 2N2222s for Q1-2 and a BC550 for Q3, though I plan to try out some different ones. Also, you may want to try a lower value for the gain pot. There's a serious drop in gain once you start turning it down. Since the first stage is based on the Fuzz Face, maybe try a B1 or 2k pot. Reverse log might not be a bad idea either.