Category: Gear

New gear: Death By Audio Madness

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Death By Audio Kill Kill Filter:

2 identicle eq’s can be switched back and forth on the fly for an endless seeming changing sounds as you play. This is basically an update DBA Sound Saw and they added in some gain also. The gain adds some nice sparkle and grit to any stacked fuzz or clean signal. I am really enjoying it and can find some great uses for it.

Death By Audio War Fuzz:

The Fuzz War from Death by Audio is the ultimate in thick, rich, nasty fuzz and distortion. The Fuzz War features more gain and fuzz sound than any other pedal on the market. Death by Audio knows that there is hundreds of fuzz pedals out there for guitar. Clones, original designs, there is a fuzz for every occasion. Now there’s a fuzz for all out galactic domination that ranges from a light overdrive to blistering fuzz chaos. Death by Audio has removed the internal drive control and added a fuzz knob on the face of the pedal that ranges from no distortion whatsoever to full on eardrum rattling fuzz. Set your volume, adjust the tone of the signal and then use the fuzz knob to layer in fuzz distortion.  ProAudioGuitars

New Gear: Death By Audio Interstellar Overdriver

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This showed up at my door today and it will find a nice home on my bass pedal board. I was looking for a overdrive that was not so “fuzz” for my bass and this kind of fell in my lap. Hope to get it burned in this weekend.

Death By Audio Interstellar Overdriver:

The Death By Audio Interstellar Overdriver yields days and days of warm, bluesy overdrive without the downfalls associated with screamer style pedals. The Interstellar Overdriver brings out the best of your guitar and amplifier combination and sounds better the more you turn it up. Watch out Stevie, this overdrive pedal could take over the planet. The Death By Audio Interstellar Overdriver is not transparent but adds a slight bit of midrange in just the right frequencies to add to your guitar tone and not sound muddy or oblique. This version is the Master Volume version. ProGuitarShop

80’s Dunlop Crybaby hackery

I got a free 80’s Dunlop Crybaby today and I like the sound of it but… I want to turn it into a box pedal so I can leave it in a toe or heel position into my OpAmp Big Muff Pi. So while I have this thing open I might as well throw some more control/mods on it. Here is some random notes I found on it.

Transistor Notes:

  • The 5117 silicon NPN transistors used in 70’s Crybaby wah pedals are not 2N5117’s. The number 5117 is a part number from Thomas Organ company. They are standard T092, e-c-b left to right on the flat side. Although they are obsolete, the modern day equivalent is 2N2925.

Sweep Notes:

  • you can widen the sweep by increasing the sweep cap (.01 off q2 emitter/inductor). a little goes a long way, try adding .002 at a time in parallel while listening. you can lower the sweep some without altering the highs. generally, the higher the pot value, the more highs.

Misc:

  • “Q” adjustment mod: changed 33K Ohms resistor to a 100K Ohm trimpot. You can use either a 56K or 68K resistor to tune the “Q”. Tuned trimpot to 56K ohms w/ multimeter before installing wah on circuit board.
  • Gain/Bass mod: changed the 510 Ohms resistor to a 1K Ohm trimpot. I adjusted trimpot w/ multimeter to 330 Ohms. Recommended trimpot values would be between 270 to 330 Ohms. You can use regular resistors in the 270 to 330 Ohms range.
  • Midrange mod: changed 1.5K Ohms resistor to 2.2K Ohms resistor. Other values to try out would be between 1.7K to 2.2K Ohm resistors. I was considering adding a 5K Ohm trimpot in place of the resistor and marking the trimpot on the values mentioned above. I might try this out in the future.
  • Volume mod: changed from 68K resistor to 47K resistor
  • Lower the wah frequency range: Changing the 0.01uF capacitor to a 0.022uF capacitor.

Mother of all info on wahs can be found here!

Amps

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I got everything moved in to my tiny space and hooked up and it does not look half bad. I got the 2 bassman’s running in stereo off my pedal board. more info to come.

New Gear: Electro-Harmonix The Clone Theory

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This just got here today and I am very excited about it. I played around with it for about and hour on the guitar and about an hour on the bass. This pedal is very usable and can have a very lush chorus sound to extreme warble in one move of a knob.

New build: Fairfield Barbershop

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I started with a blank vero board and marked all the cut traces with a sharpie. I then used a 3/32 drill bit and drilled out the holes of the cut traces. This seemed to work well and clean.

I need to pick up a few 2Mohm resistors to finish this out. Will be hitting up a local electronics store tomorrow to get the needed parts.

More updates to come.