Crazy Tube Circuits Ziggy Overdrive

Here's a cool MOSFET-based overdrive from Crazy Tube Circuits. Apparently it's based on a Neve console input channel stacked 3 times. With the gain down it sounds a bit like an AC30, and with it cranked it sounds like a Plexi. It was traced over on FSB (link here) and I've laid it out for board mounted pots. If you're interested in a fabricated board, check out the Starman in the store.

Valve Wizard Flanger

Mixing it up and doing Flanger Friday this week. Got a request for this circuit designed by Valve Wizard. It's unique in that it uses 2, PT2399 delay chips paired with an LFO. It features a buffered bypass, so it's not a true-bypass effect. I've also drawn up daughter boards for the bypass switching (PCB version has the footswitch board mounted). Here's the schematic for reference. You'll definitely need a 1590BB enclosure for this one.

ProTone Dead Horse Overdrive

I actually own one of these from the Dead Pony run, and the other night when I'd run out of solder I traced it. It's essentially a TS-808 clone with a couple of very minor changes. There was a jumper where an extra diode could be for asymmetrical clipping, so I've included room for the extra diode in the layout. Couldn't read the exact type of diodes, but they looked like 1N4148s. Use your favorites or socket and experiment. Also a lot of the capacitors were axial ceramic types, so the below layout reflects that. Here's the schematic I drew up.

Emerson Customs Paramount

This is Emerson's second offering. Essentially it's an Electra Distortion without the clipping diodes and it's pretty similar to the EM Drive. It adds a tone control that pans between 2 capacitors at the input. It's laid out for board mounted pots and will fit nice in a 1590B.

D*A*M Ezekiel 25:17

Here's a non-Fuzz Face/Tone Bender offering from D*A*M for Fuzz Friday. It's designed for bass, but sound great on guitar as well. It uses one half of a dual op amp to blend in clean signal, and the other half creates the distortion via soft clipping. You have 4 options for clipping diodes, germanium, silicon, LEDs, and bypass, selectable via a rotary switch. The rotary will have to be wired off board, but the rest of the pots are board mounted.

Keeley Katana

The Katana is a highly regarded clean boost pedal that can give a nice clean boost or push your tube amp into breakup. The circuit itself is fairly simple, but achieves extra headroom thanks to the internal voltage doubler. For this you can use a ICL7660 or MAX1044. You may want to socket the two 4.7k resistors or replace them with 10k trimpots. The drain of both transistors need to be around 9 volts. On original units, the switch is a push/pull on the pot (which is why it's mounted to the side of the enclosure), but a regular toggle can be used. If the switch wiring doesn't make sense, reference the General Layout Notes tab for switch numbering. It should be possible to fit this in a 1590A if you're not claustrophobic. Here's the schematic for reference.

Soft-Latch Relay Switching

Switching an effect on and off can be as simple or as complicated as you can make it. 3PDTs are pretty much the standard these days for true-bypass switching. However most of the 3PDT footswitches I've used make a lot of noise (not necessarily in the circuit, it's just loud when you step on them) and while that's not really the end of the world, it'd be nice to avoid the loud "KATHUNK" of the 3PDT. Relay switching fits that bill rather nicely, and there are lots of different ways to trigger the relay, some more complicated than others.

In my search for one that was fairly simple and wouldn't take up too much room in a pedal, I came across this article from a few years back by Paul in the Lab. It uses just 3 transistors, a momentary switch, and a DPCO-type relay. I've drawn his circuit up for use with a board mounted SPST momentary off/on footswitch (if you need a perf layout, check out this one over on lvlark's blog). You'll need a 5 volt Omron G6S-2 relay (I got mine here), and a lot of different transistors can be used. BC547 and 557s are called for in Paul's schematic, but 2N3904 and 3906s or similar can be used as well. Most SPST momentary switches I found had the solder lugs on the side, so the board has been laid out to fit vertically in a pedal enclosure. Everything is mounted to the circuit board on the component side and the board is small enough to fit in a 1590B.

Note:
This has been updated to reflect the discussion below.

Here's how the switch should mount to the board.