This is a library of perfboard and single-sided PCB effect layouts for guitar and bass. I'm not an electrical engineer by any stretch of the imagination, just a DIY'er who likes drawing layouts. It is meant for the hobbyist (so commercial use of any of these layout is not allowed without permission) and as a way to give back to the online DIY community.

Friday, December 8, 2017

Basic Audio Zippy

The Zippy is a silicon fuzz designed to give that vintage brassy sound. I've laid it out for board mounted pots and it'll fit in a 1590B or a 125B with top mount jacks. In the words of John Lyons...

Early fuzz boxes were designed to emulate the sounds of the saxophone.
The Zippy will allow you to channel your inner Coltrane with very reedy fuzz tones. Saxy and sexy.
At lower settings a nice musical razor blade fuzz sizzle.
Turn it up and it becomes an increasingly sharper toothed saw blade fuzz. It snarls. It spits. It goes from fat and thick to thin and cutting without losing it's signature top end sizzle and low end rumble.
The body control (bass cut) makes it easy to dial in just the right amount of beef. Zipper fuzz tones bloom and softly decay.




15 comments:

  1. Is that the correct transistor part code? MPSA6513 or is it MPS6513?. Any substitutes ?.
    Thanks for this great resource!

    daz

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    1. Good catch–it is MPS6513. For subs... MPSA06s or 2N2369s would work well. Really anything with lower hFE. Even 2N3904s.

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  2. Where can I find a schematic to this one, my usual googling is failing me...

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  3. Does the distance between the components matter and how the layout is composed? For example can I route the ground path any way I want or does it have to be as on the layout? And also the order of the components? I tend to route the pcb different than on your layouts to save space..and gets noise on every build.
    Thank you for a great site:)

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    1. As long as everything connects to ground that needs to, it should be fine. If you're getting noise try spacing things out a bit more. Saving a few square mm of board space don't matter if it doesn't work right.

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  4. i just built and tested it. it works perfectly so you can VERIFY IT.

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  5. the body control works in reverse of the video though. i just rotated mine 180 degrees and now it matches.

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  6. Used the christmas holidays to get my hands on this again. There's a layout available with some component changes over at tagboard which is supposed to reflect a more recent version of the zippy. I performed these changes to my zippy clone based on this layout and I indeed can confirm it sounds much more like the demo videos one can find out there. Both versions sound good, though, but are very different. Funnily the changes are more or less marginal: change the 1nF cap connected to lug 3 of the texture pot to 470pF. Change the only 1k resistor to 5k6 and change the pot values to: 100kA for volume, 250kB for texture and 100kB for fuzz. That's it. Have fun!

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    1. o, thanks, man! Used all 100 k pots, 470 (better, than 1n, more high), but 1 kom. Transistors used 2n2222, hfe 145, working good!

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    2. Hi H.A., I noticed here: http://guitar-fx-layouts.42897.x6.nabble.com/Basic-Audio-Zippy-Fuzz-Verified-td40451.html that the maker of the second layout mentioned that Body 1 wasn't connected to anything on his original Zippy II. Did you modify how your pots were wired? Thanks!

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  7. I have burned Q1 2n2222, 7 changed it some what could find. It was bc 548c. Working better, i realy got tubes sound!

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