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, November 25, 2015

Catalinbread Formula No. 5

The Formula No. 5 is a 5E3 Tweed Deluxe amp emulating overdrive pedal. It's essentially 2 JFET stages (very similar to the AMZ Booster) with the Tweed Deluxe tone and volume (in this case gain) controls in between. A master volume pot is added at the output for more control. Here's a great demo of this pedal from Just Nick, comparing it to an original Tweed Deluxe.



On the PCB I've added extra +9v and ground pads in case you build this with the DC jack at the top of the enclosure. 

12 comments:

  1. Now this is the most amp-like (and I hate that definition) pedal I have ever build, sounds amazing. There's a mod that involves adding a switch to take out one resistor and add gain, just google for it, I recomend it, sounds a lot like Neil Young cooking the tubes

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    1. It's the 2m2 next to q1. just short the connection.
      FYI tagboardeffects recommend switching it out with a dpdt for some reason. Use an spst and enjoy the noise when it supercharges the gain.

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  2. can i use j201?? i can't find any 5457

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    1. Definitely socket and experiment. I would think the J201 would work ok.

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  3. works great, really bassy tone with my strat. i use it after a green russian big muff. nice

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  4. Help please needed.
    made this twice on vero now and once on a pcb and got same result every time,nice clean sound but no gain,changed jfets pots etc same result,cant seem to get to the bottom of it.

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  5. Turns my Vox AC4 into Tweed heaven with the stomp of a switch, noiiiiiiiice

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  6. The 47pf should be 470pf,connected to tone 3,https://www.freestompboxes.org/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=9373&start=180#p135930

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  7. I originally built this as the layout to use with my Fender J-Bass, but it had too much gain for what I wanted to use it for; even at the lowest gain setting it was a little too dirty. I just swapped the JFETs and like it a lot more. Based on some info in this article: http://www.runoffgroove.com/fetzervalve.html, I thought using JFETs with higher Idss values might lower the gain, and it seems to have worked. I used J211 for Q2 and Q4, and 2N5458 for Q1 and Q3 (I would have used all the same, but those were the only JFETs I had on hand with higher Idss than 2N5457s). It actually now sounds really close to a TS808 I made from this site with bass mods from BYOC, but the Formula 5 sounds a lot less compressed than the TS808, which I like. Cool! Thanks Effects Layouts for making my life better!

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  8. I'm trying to find the Formula 55 layout somewhere with no luck, I hope to see this one in here soon.

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