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.

Wednesday, August 30, 2017

Colorsound Tremolo

Haven't done a tremolo in a while, so let's remedy that with the original 4-transistor Colorsound Tremolo (the re-issue is the 3-transistor version). Originals used 2SC945 transistors (BCE pinout), but I've laid this out for more common NPN transistors with CBE pinout. You might want to use a C100k pot for the Speed control. Here's the schematic for reference.


Monday, August 28, 2017

Friedman BE-OD

By popular demand, here's the BE-OD from Friedman, one of the best Plexi in a box pedals around. Well, not Plexi really. It's designed to emulate the Friedman Brown Eye tube amp head. Laid this one out for board mounted pots, and it will fit easily in a 1590BB. More info can be found on the FSB thread for this one.


Friday, August 25, 2017

Field Effects Acceleron Fuzz

Here's a pretty unique fuzz for Fuzz Friday–the Acceleron from Field Effects. It uses a mix of BJT and JFET transistors and offers a wide range of fuzz tones. I've laid it out for board mounted pots and you'll notice a big box film cap labeled ??? It's probably 2.2µF, but socket and experiment.


Wednesday, August 23, 2017

Throbak Overdrive Boost

Pretty much a Colorsound Overdriver clone. Laid this out for a 125B (because of the dual footswitches) with board mounted pots. The boost footswitch bypasses the PreGain pot and only uses one side of a DPDT. Use the other side for LED wiring. If the off board wiring is confusing, check out the thread with the schematic here on FSB. The diagram is for a vero layout but the wiring is the same.


Monday, August 21, 2017

JHS Charlie Brown V3

Unrelated to the Angry Charlie circuit, the Charlie Brown emulates the brown sound of a JTM45 amp and is a variation on the zVex Box of Rock without the boost section. The input stage is an AMZ Mosfet Booster (replacing the SHO input stage of the Box of Rock to avoid crackle in the gain pot), and the tone control has been modified to include the AMZ presence control.


Friday, August 18, 2017

Frantone The Sweet

Laying out Big Muff variations never gets old for me. This one uses germanium transistors in the two clipping stages (and predates the EQD Hoof which also uses germanium transistors) along with schottky diodes (1N6263s). Q4 is a FS25444, but the usual BMP transistor suspects will work as well (2N5088, MPSA18, BC549C, etc). Other than component values, the biggest difference between this and a typical Muff is the placement of the tone section. On a typical BMP the tone section is immediately following the 2nd clipping stage, followed by a gain recovery stage. Here, the gain recovery stage follows the 2nd clipping stage, pushing the tone stack. Schematic can be found over on FSB.



The bass version, the Bassweet, can also be built on this board with just a few value changes. The Gain and Tone pots are changed to A10k, and the rest of the value changes are illustrated below:

Wednesday, August 16, 2017

Simple CabSim

Came across this design in researching a different project and thought I'd draw it up. It uses 3 transistors and doesn't take up a lot of space, so you should be able to fit it in a 1590A or add it to another pedal. More info can be found here. Sounds like you can use pretty much any medium-high gain PNP/NPN pair for Q2-3 (2N5087/2N5088, BC560/BC550, etc).