Darkglass Duality Fuzz

 Happy Fuzz Friday! Here's a big one that hopefully makes up for my absence lately. Sounds great on bass and guitar. From Darkglass:

The Duality is a unique fuzz pedal that contains two discrete fuzz circuits—a gated saw-tooth wave and a raunchy high-gain sound—which can be mixed together to yield a vast selection of distinct sonic textures.

Ibanez BS10 Bass Stack

Time for some bass distortion. This one's a RAT with an input buffer and soft clipping instead of hard. Apparently these were built on the same PCB as the Fat Cat and LA Metal. For a drilling template just use the Fat Cat one.

DOD FX91 Bass Overdrive

Always need more bass effects, right? This was one of the first bass ODs to have a clean blend. Should be an easy fit in a 1590B. Here's the schematic for reference.

Fuzzrocious Ram the Manparts

Happy Fuzz Friday! Here's the now discontinued Ram the Manparts from Fuzzrocious. It's a 386-based fuzz/distortion with a voltage starve control, gain toggle, and volume control and sounds pretty killer on guitar and bass. Should be a quick build and a nice fit in a 1590B.

Music Man Sabre II Bass Preamp

Lot of requests for this one after I posted the Stingray pre a few weeks ago, so here's the Sabre II. Pretty similar the the Stingray but with a few value differences and extra resistor in the feedback loop, and the added bright switch.

Music Man StingRay Preamp

Had several requests for on-board bass preamps and what better place to start than the original StingRay circuit? Simple 2 band-EQ with low current draw and should be small enough to tuck into the control cavity of whatever bass you're wanting to add it to. Other single opamps can be used, but the current draw may increase, draining your 9v battery quicker. For example a TL071 draws 10x the current of the LM4250. A good replacement would be the LT1351.

Bass Direct Box

Got a request for the DI portion of the Hartke LH1000 bass amp. This is more or less that, but with a simplified power section. In the amp this runs off a bipolar 15 volt supply, but I would think it would also work with regular 9 volt supply. There's not an unbalanced output, but if you need to add that you can probably add it off pin 3 of the XLR. Schematic for reference.

EHX Bassballs

Not sure I missed doing this one ages ago, but better late than never. The Bassballs is a classic envelope filter that's been a staple of Electro Harmonix's line up for a long time. Designed for bass, but works great on guitar as well. Trimmers are very dynamic and might be fun as external pots. Also if it's super loud, adding a volume pot at the output is super easy—remove the 47k resistor off the Out pad, wire the Out pad to lug 3 of an A100k pot, lug 1 to ground, and lug 2 becomes the new circuit output. Here's the schematic for reference. Should fit in a 1590B, though it'll be a tight squeeze.

EWS Tri-Logic Bass Preamp II

Here's a pretty simple but effective bass preamp from EWS. It's a 3-band EQ being pushed by a MOSFET gain stage. Looks like EWS made a version for Xotic with the same name. Not a lot different between the two other than some value changes laid out in this schematic on FSB. I've laid it out for a 125B with top mounted jacks. It runs off an 18v supply so use your favorite charge pump if you want to include that in the pedal.

Bass Filter Pedal

Here's a cool little bass filter pedal designed by bleepboxes. Really low parts count should make for a pretty quick build. Original info here. Might be a good idea to put the 4.7n cap on a switch with a 2.2n for more tonal variation.

Mini BassDrive

This is an adaption of the Fulltone Bassdrive without the boost footswitch, allowing for a smaller enclosure. I got the idea from a comment by Simão on the Fulldrive 2 post, and I though it could prove useful for my fellow bassists. Like the Fulldrive/Bassdrive, it's modded Tube Screamer with clipping and voicing options with the 2 toggle switches. Based on this schematic with the boost footswitch and 2nd gain pot removed.

Human Gear Animato

Got a request for this one, and it's an interesting Big Muff variant. If you're a fan of Muse you're probably already familiar with this one. There's a germanium input stage followed by a fairly standard Big Muff circuit. Here's the schematic for reference. It would be a tight squeeze in a 1590B even if you wired the pots off board, but probably doable. Otherwise it should fit nicely in a 125B with top mounted jacks.

Sunn 200S Preamp

Here's a simple bass preamp circuit derived from the Sunn 200S using JFETs. It's pretty similar to the Bassman Preamp, but with the EQ section at the end of the circuit instead of the middle. Original S200S amps didn't have the Mid control, but it's kind of necessary IMHO. Bias the JFETs to 4.5v and adjust to taste. Not sure if the BAT85 diodes are necessary as they're not in the Bassman Pre, but I left them in just in case. Also not 100% sure if the below demo follows this schematic exactly, but it should be in the ballpark. Should fit nicely in a 1590B.

The Gruntbox

Got a request for this one and I'm always up for a bass effect. So this week's Fuzz Friday is Mark Hammer's Gruntbox. It's a pretty unique design and a lot of flexibility. More info here. Schematic and demo files can be downloaded here.

Ashbory Bass Preamp

The Ashbory bass was first introduced in 1986 and is/was a half scale (18") fretless travel bass with a piezo pickup and built in preamp. That preamp is essentially a Baxendall tone stack feeding into the volume control, into an op amp based gain stage. I stumbled across the schematic and thought it would be a good addition to the library. Should fit nicely in a 1590B, or you could wire it into a bass.

Darkglass Microtubes B3K

Gotten a few requests for this one and I finally got around to doing it. It's a bit of a hodge-podge–3 dual opamps, a hex inverter, and a JFET mu-amp array. Definitely not fitting this in a 1590B, but will fit nicely in a 1590BB with the pots board mounted. Info and schematic here.

Earthquaker Devices Westwood

For the blog's 600th layout, here's a new one that didn't take long to get traced. Here's EQD's newest offering, the Westwood Translucent Drive Manipulator. Great for pushing your amp and giving a near clean boost. It features an active 2-band EQ and sounds great on bass as well as guitar.

Devi Ever Ruiner

Another brutal fuzz machine from Devi, and sounds great on bass and guitar. Pretty straight forward design–two cascaded transistor amplifier stages with a pre-gain control (intensity) and standard volume control. Pots are board mounted and it shouldn't take all that long to throw together.

Chunk Systems Brown Dog

Got a bass fuzz for Fuzz Friday this week. It's a gated fuzz with both clean and dirty level controls, an envelope jack to use with funk-style effects, and a soft/hard clipping switch. From the manufacturer:

The Brown Dog enables you to produce rampaging waves of meat with your bass guitar while still keeping your basslines tight and letting the character of your instrument's tone shine through. With two fuzz modes (hard and soft), a mixing stage and a unique gating circuit the Brown Dog gives you a wide range of fuzzy and synthy bass tones.

I've laid it out for board mounted pots and will probably fit best in a 125B, but it will probably fit in a 1590B if you omit the envelope jack.

Maestro Bass Brassmaster

The Brassmaster was originally designed for bass and also picked up by guitarists. The circuit is very unique and originals are hard to come by. I was able to lay it out to fit in a 125B with board mounted pots.