PedalPalFX PAL 800

 By popular demand, here's the PAL 800, a well regarded Marshall-in-a-box circuit. Should fit nicely in a 125B. Schematic here. All the trimmers except the one just below the Volume control are for biasing the JFETs. Start at 4.5v on the drain of each JFET and adjust by ear from there. The other trimer is for smoothing out the output signal.

Mad Professor Simble

This is been traced for a few weeks now over on FSB and I've meant to lay it out since then, but just now getting around to it. If you don't know, it's an amp-in-a-box type trying to emulate a Dumble amp. Apparently it sounds very good with smaller amps. Should fit nicely in a 1590B with board mounted pots as per usual.

Keeley El Rey Dorado

Here's another Plexi-in-a-box overdrive, this time from the great Robert Keeley. It's a cascaded opamp design running on a bipolar +/-9v supply. The Power Toggle as it's known on the original selects between red LEDs or BAT46s for asymmetrical clipping.

Baja AFD MkII

Gotten a couple requests for this one. Here's Bajaman's second take at his AFD circuit with a better frequency response than the first AFD. More info here on FSB. Should fit nicely in a 1590B.

Baja Reactor

This one was requested ages ago and I got halfway through laying it out, and then promptly forgot about it. It's a power amp/speaker cabinet simulator, emulating a SLO power amp and a couple different speaker cabinets based on the value used for CX (see schematic for values). This layout follows the Rev4 schematic from the thread here on FSB.

May I?

Got a request for this one. Another AC30/Rangemaster emulator to try and get Brian May's tone. Here's the schematic for reference. It calls for "BC245/256" JFETs for Q3-4, but I think that's a typo and should have the BF prefix. Should work with other JFETs as well. So socket and experiment with the usuals—J201, 2N5457, etc.

Menatone Ms. Foxy Brown

Another Marshall-in-a-box, the Ms. Foxy Brown uses 3 J201s and feels a lot like an older Run Off Groove design (though it's not). As per usual, you'll need to bias the J201s to about 4.5v and then fine tune as needed. Should fit easily in a 1590B. Schematic for reference.

Menatone Pig

Came across this one and it's an interesting JFET-based OD with active bass and treble controls. It's apparently based on a late-60s Marshall 200 amp. Drew up the schematic for reference.

I believe the originals run off a 9v supply, but newer ones have a voltage doubler internally to run off 18v. Since I know there are different preferences when it comes to those, so I left it off the board. I realized after I drew all this up I probably should have included trimmers for biasing the JFETs, so you may want to socket the resistors going from voltage to the drain of Q1, Q3, and Q4-6. Though if you're using in-spec J201s (I highly suggest the SMD version and conversion boards) the stock values will probably work fine. YMMV Pots are board mounted and will fit nicely in a 125B.

GoosoniqueWorx Seventh Heaven

Got a request for this one. It's apparently a modified Bogner Ecstasy Red, which is a JFET adaption of the Red channel on the Bogner Ecstasy amp. Since it uses 2 footswitches, I went ahead and designed the board for a 1590BB with all 6 pots board mounted. The boost switch uses one side of a DPDT footswitch (with the other side being used for LED indication). As usual, set the trimmers to half the supply voltage and then adjust by ear. This would be a good candidate to run off 18v as well. Here's the schematic for reference.

Bajaman AC30 Normal Channel

Here's Baja's AC30 Normal Channel emulator. Throw a treble booster in front of this and you're pretty darn close to nailing some Brian May tones. Schematic and discussion here on FSB.

Baja AC30TB Emulator

Another one of Bajaman's many amp emulator circuits. It emulates the frequency response of the classic Vox AC30 top boost channel, including power amplifier emulation. It's designed to fit in a 125B with top mounted jacks. Schematic and discussion on FSB here.

The input buffer stage uses a 2SK117 JFET with DGS pinout, but I've throw in an extra pad to use JFETs with GSD pinout (J201, 2N5457, etc). If you're using the 2SK117 you won't need to populate the jumper by Q1, but if you're using a GSD pinout transistor, you will need that jumper.

Catalinbread WIIO

The Catalinbread WIIO is a Hiwatt amp emulator specifically going for the sound of Pete Townsend's Hiwatts on the Live at Leeds album. (Throwing this and a Univox SuperFuzz in the same box would be a must if you're a big fan of the Who...) The topology of the circuit (cascaded MOSFETs) is similar to the zVex Box of Rock and Catalinbread's other Hiwatt emulator, the Rah. Here's the schematic for reference. Should fit in a 1590B just fine.

Ramble FX Marvel Drive 2/3

Here's a newer version of the Marvel Drive from Ramble FX. Did the first version of this circuit a couple years ago, and decided to update the layout with board mounted pots and the Presence pot.  I believe the only difference between V2 and V3 is a switchable internal LT1054-based voltage doubler in the V3. Given that those can be somewhat expensive and I know you all have different preferences when it comes to voltage doublers, I've left the charge pump out. If you want to make a V2, just ignore all this chatter about voltage doublers and just build the layout below. If you want to make a V3, wire lug 2 of a SPDT toggle switch to the +9/18v pad of the layout below, then wire lug 1 to +9v and lug 3 to the output of your voltage doubler. Here's the schematic this is based on.

Mr. Black BB-74x

This is Jack Deville's Marshall-in-a-box emulating a 1974X 18-watt combo amp. Tracing credit goes to Ralf Gottschalk, who has a nice little dual-layer board of this up on OshPark if you don't feel like etching or grabbing the perf for this one (build doc with schematic in the description).

Baja VH4

Another drive circuit from Bajaman. He's been on a tear lately! In his words...

Here is my latest build based on the frequency response characteristics of the Diezel VH4 tube head channels 3 and 4, but scaled down into a 9v dc pedal friendly format... I got a chance to try using it on Neil Young's "Keep on Rockin' in the Free World" and needless to say it sounded awesome on very low gain setting Channel 3 - just the right amount of searing crunch and in my view one of my best pedals to date!

It will fit in either a 125B with top mounted jacks, or a 1590B with side jacks. If you go 1590B, you'll either have to offboard the pots or use long leg pcb-mount pots and populate them on the component side. I've added extra pads for the JFETs so you can use either DGS or GSD pinout transistors. Schematic can be found here.

Lovepedal Jubilee

Here's Lovepedal's Jubilee–pretty close circuit-wise to the Purple Plexi and Black Magic. Should be a pretty quick build. Note, if it sounds too dark, replace the 47nF cap with a 4.7nF cap. Schematic here.

zVex '59 Sound

zVex's new '59 Sound looks to emulate an overdrive '59 Fender Bassman amp and is essentially a tweaked Box of Rock. I've left out the boost section (which is essentially a SHO after this circuit), but can be easily added with the old SHO layout here on the blog.

Also, there's another installment of the DIYLC tutorial up on YouTube today. I actually am not using DIYLC all that much in it... 

Baja SLO

Here's another one from Bajaman. It's a modified version of his AFD, but tuned to sound like a Soldano amp high gain channel. There are enough differences to necessitate a new board. More info here on FSB. Much like the AFD board, this one has the option for buffered bypass or true bypass. And the drilling template fore the AFD will work for the SLO as well.

Run Off Groove Uno

I know I've mentioned this to a few people over the past year probably, but I've finally been able to get it edited. That's right, here's my tutorial on how I layout circuits in DIYLC... the first installment at least. The tutorial shows how I created today's layout–the Uno from Run Off Groove. It's a JFET amp emulator of the Boogie Mk I. For the schematic, demo and more info check out the Uno article.

Run Off Groove Azabache

Not sure how/why I avoided laying this one out for so long. The Azabache is a great sounding overdrive that emulates classic Fender amps. Check out the ROG article on the circuit for more info, schematic and sound demos. Adjust the trimmers so there's 6v on the drain of Q1, and 5v on the drains of Q2-4. You should be able to squeeze it into a 1590B.