BBE AM64 American Metal

Here's the BBE AM64. While "Metal" is in its name, it seems more suited for heavier rock sounds. 70s metal at best. Nonetheless, it's a very good sounding distortion box. The circuit is essentially a Guv'nor with soft clipping instead of hard, along with a DS-1 tone stack.

TubeSound Overdrive

Here's a simple one-knob drive that's ripe for modification. It uses an interesting combination of one NPN and one PNP silicon transistor stacked together. There are a few different values you can tweak to taste. Here's a schematic for reference:

• The input capacitor (C1) could be increased for more bass.
• C2 could be increased to 47-100µF for more drive.
• The output capacitor (C3) could be decrease for more treble.
• R5 could be replaced by a 10-20k pot, lug 1 going to ground. C2 could then be moved between lugs 1 and 2. This would act as a gain control (much like in a Fuzz Face).
• R3 (trimmer) could be moved off-board as an alternative bias/gain control.

I haven't tried these modifications, but they should do something interesting. YMMV

Roger Mayer Axis Fuzz

For #FuzzFriday here's Roger Mayer's Axis Fuzz, and it's the 100th fuzz effect on the blog. Maybe I should branch out more... It was designed by Roger in the late 60s for Jimi Hendrix, and is named after the title track of "Axis Bold as Love." It uses a PNP silicon transistor for Q1 and NPN silicon for Q2. So while it will give you some Hendrix-style tones, it isn't quite a Fuzz Face. The schematic can be found here.

Casper Electronics EchoBender

Today marks the one year anniversary of this blog. Thanks to everyone for your comments, verifying layouts, and just generally being really cool people. To celebrate, I give you a really cool and crazy delay, the Casper Electronics EchoBender. The EchoBender is a development of/modified Deep Blue Delay. I couldn't quite get it to fit with on-board pots in anything smaller than a 1590BB, but the original is in a giant wedge enclosure, so I guess it's still an improvement. If you feel like wiring 6 pots off-board, you should be able to fit it in a 125B or even a 1590B. From Casper:

The Echo Bender is an echo, distortion and experimental, stand alone noise generator.
It’s capable of creating smooth, clean echos as well as delving deep into screeching, noisy realms seldom heard from a traditional echo pedal.

Here's the link to the 1590BB drilling template.

Tychobrahe Octavia

The Octavia is one of the many legendary effects to come out of the late 60s. It is also one of the rarest pedals of the era, as there weren't many built. Like most effects of its day, the Octavia is a positive ground effect. There are several schematics for it floating around, but the one I based this layout on can be found here. Most positive ground effects I layout I also post a negative ground effect version as well. I haven't done so for this one to keep the classic mojo of the original. If you want to make it negative ground, just rotate electrolytic caps, the 1N4001 polarity protection diode, and use NPN transistors for  Q2 and 3.

Colorsound 3-Knob ToneBender Reissue

I was trolling Google Images the other night looking for schematics and I stumbled across this. I think the only thing this reissue has in common with an original is the enclosure and graphics. It uses a single opamp with soft clipping and a Big Muff-style tone stack. If you use 9mm pots you could probably cram it into a 1590A.

Catalinbread RAH

This one's for those of you trying to nail some Jimmy Page tones. The RAH emulates the HiWatt heads Jimmy used live in the early days of Zeppelin. It uses only 3 MOSFET transistors, and features a 3-band EQ section. I'm going to shut up now so you can hear Andy from PGS put this thing through its paces.