Boss DS-1 Distortion

Here's the classic Boss DS-1 Distortion, used by many greats like Kurt Cobain, Joe Satriani, and Steve Vai, just to name a few. This one has been modified to eliminate the typical Boss flip-flop switching so it can be wired for true bypass, but it retains the input and output buffers.

Schematic can be found here.

Frantone Peach Fuzz

For this week's #fuzzfriday, I present the Frantone Peach Fuzz. Got a request for this one. Quiet circuitry and classic fuzz and overdrive tones. It seems to be the circuit the Danelectro Cool Cat fuzz was based on, and that thing sounds great (it was one of my first pedals when I started playing). Original units use relay switching and the circuitry for that has been omitted from the layout below.

AmpTweaker Tight Metal

Got a lot of requests for this one. The Tight Metal is an over the top crunch machine for metal players. It has 2 effects loops, which not everyone will want. So just jumper those pads if you don't want that feature. The Gate pot is an internal trimmer, but I thought it might be useful off the board. This effect can be run off either +9v or +18v, and you should be able to fit this in a 125B.

BigFoot Fx MagnaVibe

The MagnaVibe is a vibrato effect inspired by the built in effect on old Magnatone amplifiers. From the BigFoot Fx description:

The Magnavibe was inspired by the early 1960's vibrato guitar effect (not the typical tremolo which is just pulse modulation). The Magnatone amp was known for having that amazing wobbly sound. Setting out to put that type of sound in a box and use it with any amp took much experimenting. The results are excellent. This is not a plain one dimensional vibrato such as a chorus pedal with the dry mix removed. Delay chips weren't even used back then. Nor is it just another uni-vibe clone, but a unique sound with that classic unique tone. Adding spring reverb or delay after the vibrato sounds especially good.

I've drawn it so there's space to use a VTL5 or similar photocell, or you can make your own. Either way, theres space for it. A lot of layouts I've seen don't allow for a comfortable enough space to get the LDR and LED lined up nicely. You might even be able to get this to fit in a 1590a.

Jack Deville Boost Tiger

Here's an op-amp based boost circuit from Jack Deville (Mr. Black Effects). He was kind enough to share his schematic a couple years ago on FSB. I stumbled upon it and thought it would be a good addition here. It should easily fit in a 1590a, and you can probably board mount the pot too.

EarthQuaker Devices Bit Commander

The Bit Commander is an synth/octave effect that's all analog. It creates square wave synth tones across 4 octaves (2 up, 2 down) and it's capable of creating a wide range of sounds. The octave down effect is generated from the ICs, while the octave up comes from the 4024 and transformer (kind of like an Octavia). From EQD:

Like all analog octave effects, there are some basic rules to follow that will get you the most enjoyment from your Bit Commander. Use the neck pickup and play single notes. The best tracking occurs from the 7th fret up on all the strings. Below the 7th will still track but there will be occasional glitches and stutters. The lower the note, the harder it is for the Bit Commander to register. The use of Bass and lower registers on keyboards will yield unexpected, sometimes pleasing, sometimes disgusting results. These are not mistakes or flaws, it is the nature of analog octaves.

Fulltone 69

Happy #fuzzfriday, everybody! The 69 is Fulltone's take on the classic, late 60s, germanium Fuzz Face circuit. They've added a few extra controls to help shape the fuzz. The Bias (or Input as it's called in the 69 Mk II) pot is a common mod to the Fuzz Face circuit (it's a trimmer in the AnalogMan Sunface) and controls the input impedance. It can clean up the sound a little, just like rolling down the volume pot on the guitar. The Contour pot controls some of the voltage going to Q2 and the output cap. For more info, here's the schematic. Pots can be board mount from the solder-side of the circuit board and it should all fit in a 1590B just fine. The perf side of the drawing shows positive ground and the PCB side shows negative ground. Typical Fuzz Face germanium transistors should be used (Q1: hFE ~70, Q2: hFE ~100), but as always, socket and experiment.

Boss SD-1 SUPER OverDrive

Since the Zakk Wylde overdrive from last week was based on the SD-1, I figured I might as well go ahead and lay that circuit out as well. This doesn't have Boss switching so you can wire it up for true bypass. I've added some extra pads around D3 if you want to change that to a germanium (which seems to be a fairly common mod to this effect).

Gas Pedals DumbBell

Got a request for this one. It's an overdrive that's supposed to get you into Dumble sound territory. There are 2 versions of this pedal out there, a one knob version (with just a volume control), and a 3-knob version that the layout below follows.

Paul Cochrane's Timmy

Often cloned without giving credit to where credit is due (cough*lovepedal*cough), the Timmy is one of the most sought after overdrives on the market today. And really, if you can afford one, just buy one from Paul C. He's a great guy. For those of you who can't, here's my layout.

9v to 18v Charge Pump

Most effects run off 9 volts, but a lot of them can run off 18. The Fulltone OCD, Earthquaker Devices Monarch, and the MI Audio Crunch Box are just a few examples. If you don't have an 18 volt power supply and want to get some different sounds and more headroom out of an effect, try this charge pump daughter board. It won't get you all the way to exactly 18v, but should get you pretty close. You could build it into a 1590a to have an (almost) 18 volt power supply, or build it into a pedal with a switch to toggle between 9v and 18v supply.

Note: Always check with the manufacturer if your pedal will run off 18 volts before you use this circuit. I am not responsible for any blue smoke, fire, cursing, and/or broken effects that may result from improper use of this layout. :D

Escobedo Ugly Face

Today's #fuzzfriday is an Tim Escobedo design: the Ugly Face. Here's what he had to say about it:

The Uglyface is a completely all-out fuzz unit for fat, noisy buzzsaw sounds. P1 sets the threshold for triggering the fuzz. This characteristic also means that notes can fade out abruptly when they decay below the set level. P2 is the frequency control. It functions as an unorthodox tone control, at one extreme producing synthesized octave down effects, at the other extreme, thin and nasal tones. When the threshold is set below the trigger point, the Uglyface becomes a free running oscillator, with P2 controlling the frequency. P3 is a Sensitivity control, regulating how much of the guitar signal will modulate the Frequency control.

Make sure the second IC is a CMOS 555 otherwise the effect won't work. Here's the schematic for reference.

MXR ZW-44 Berzerker Overdrive

Got a request for Zakk Wylde's signature overdrive from MXR. It's essentially Boss SD-1 Super Overdrive without the buffers. Original units have MC33178P, but socket and experiment with dual op-amps. You can use right angle PCB pots to mount them on the board from the solder-side.

Little Angel Chorus

Here's a simple, fairly low parts count chorus based around a PT2399, designed by Rick Holt (aka Frequency Central) from the DIYStompboxes forum. I've drawn 2 versions, one with board-mounted pots, and one off-board pots. The 2nd IC (NE5532 in the layout) can be any dual op-amp (a TL072 works well), just socket and experiment. The board is fairly large, so you might want to use long leg right angle PCB mount pots and mount them from the component side to save space. Here's a quick sound sample.

Dunlop GCB-95 Cry Baby

Here's one of the most classic effects of all time, the Cry Baby wah-wah from Dunlop. The big red thing in the layout is the Fasel inductor, and there's room on the board for a pull down resistor at the input if you need it, I just didn't include it in the drawing. What else is there to say? Just build it!

Electro-Harmonix Big Muff π

I got a request for a layout of the Big Muff that could be used to build the Triangle, Rams Head, Green Russian, or NYC versions. While it shouldn't be that hard to take one of my previous layouts of the BMP and make the value changes, I thought I'd make a more detailed project than I normally do. First, let's start with the schematic. This is the basic circuit used by pretty much every variation of the Big Muff (excluding the IC Big Muff):

The only difference between versions is a handful of component values. Generally, the circuit was tweaked to work with whatever Mike Matthews had on hand. As a result, there are about 18 different variations produced by Electro-Harmonix. Now, not all of those variations sound all that good. But over the years several really good sounding Muffs have been traced and their component values posted on the web (mostly on Kit Rae's awesome Big Muff site). The 4 versions specified in this project seem to be some of the most popular and best sounding Muffs.

The component names in the schematic above correlate to this layout:

For a full BOM for all 4 versions, download the file linked below. In addition to the BOM, it contains scaled transfers for etching your own circuit board, as well as a scaled drilling template for building the effect into a Hammond 1590B enclosure.

Effects Layouts' BIG MUFF Project

If a BMP variation you want to build isn't specified in this project, use the above schematic and compare it to the schematic of your desired version to figure out what components go where.

Updated Sept. 2, 2015 to correct schematic, placement of Tone pot, and drilling template.

Escobedo Punch-In-The-Face

Today's #fuzzfriday offering is the Punch-In-The-Face, designed by Tim Escobedo. It's based on the Fuzz Face, but with a JFET in Q2. Here's what Tim had to say about it:

The latest Fuzz Face inspired offering. The big difference is the "Trauma" control, when used with the Gain control, will yield tones from hard fuzz to octave up to sputtery pulse to "soft attack" fuzz. Good clean up with the guitar volume knob. It may be good to choose Q2 from a lot of J201s to give the best "soft attack" fuzz and octave up effects.

The pots can be board mounted using common short leg PCB pots, with the board vertically mounted in the pedal. Trauma and Volume pots mount from the component side, and Gain from the solder side.

Wampler Triple Wreck

The Triple Wreck is a high gain distortion that some say sounds like a 5150 amp. It has a 3-band EQ and a switch to select between "Vintage" and "Modern" tones. There's also a built in boost section to take things over the top.

I've laid out the distortion section and the boost section as separate layouts in case someone wants to build it without the boost in a 1590B. The boost itself might be a nice little stand alone pedal and would easily fit in a 1590A. (The boost is a simple BJT-based circuit that drives a modified Big Muff tone stack. If you wanted to add a volume control to the boost circuit, just connect lug 3 of a 100k pot to lug 2 of the Cream pot, then ground lug 1 of the new Volume pot, with lug 2 to Out.)

Edit Aug. 20:

Got a request for this without the ground loop as there have been reports of noise in the circuit and that could be culprit. If you've already built it, try cutting some copper near the text on the PCB.

Montezuma Fuzz

Here's another Dragonfly design. This one is basically two tweaked Electra Distortion circuits stacked back to back. Here's a sound sample. Should fit pretty easily in a 1590a.

Dunlop Fuzz Face - Eric Johnson

Here's a layout for the Eric Johnson Fuzz Face. Had someone ask if they could build it on the basic Fuzz Face layout from last year. Since there's a few extra components in the EJ version, I thought I'd make a specific layout for it. Should still fit in a 1590a though. Q1 is a BC183 (hfe ~250), and Q2 is a BC183C (hfe ~650). Use the trimmer to bias Q2 to 3v.

Super OCD

I stumbled across the schematic for this a while ago and have been meaning to lay it out for a while. It's Fred Brigg's souped up version of the Fulltone OCD. Here's what he had to say about it over on his blog:

The "Super OCD" has a few extra controls:

- Firstly the "Bass" control - it's nicked from Paul C's Timmy pedal and works very well to add in pregain bass for more low end response.

- Secondly the "Saturation" control, this allows you to increase the clipping headroom of the circuit and have an overall "cleaner" tone while dialling in just the required amount of diode clipping.

- Thirdly the "Boost" control, I've configured the second opamp to allow a range of clean boosts to be selected to really allow you to push the front end of your amp into overdrive.

- The final control I've added is a switch to go between 9 volt and 18 volt operation. The 18 volt operation adds extra headroom to the circuit to stop the opamp clipping from fogging up the tone. The 9 volt operation retains the original headroom seen in the OCD.

- Other changes include alterations to the Tone control and a swap of opamp from the TL082 in the original OCD to the Burr Brown OPA2134. These changes all add up to create a really nice overdrive/distortion box. It's got all the original Fulltone OCD tones in there and loads more. If you like the original OCD you'll love the Super OCD.

I've laid this out for board mounted pots (from the solder-side with right angle PCB pots) and it should fit in a 1590B. (Though when I build this thing, it's definitely going in a 125B haha)

EDIT: Forgot to include what Q1-2 are–like in the original OCD, use 2N7000 MOSFETs.