This is a Zvex Fat Factory work alike by Madbean. I have a Fuzz Factory that was in a horizontal layout and decided I wanted to build one in a vertical layout to save space on my board. I etched up the board and found some really cool 2SA72 transistors in my stash that work great in this circuit.

This is an awesome circuit that was created by RunOffGroove and this layout was made by OftenFX. This effect is based on a popular Supro amp and this pedal captures much of the amp’s tone. This is a FET-based design and I would classify it as a low gain / medium gain pedal. It has a built on charge pump to run the pedal at 18v from a standard 9v adapter. It has a great vintage rock and roll sound to it.

Voltages:
Q1 J201
G 0v
S 0.4v
D 11.8v
Q2 J201
G 0v
S 0.4v
D 11.7v
Q3 J201
G 0v
S 0.4v
D 11.9v

I had a populated VIPFx Silk Hat OD that I built last month but not had the time to box it up. This is a great low gain circuit and breaks up nicely and is ver dynamic with playing.

I did a reverse etch of a honey bee on the enclosure and used some metallic root beer paint. I am happy with the outcome.

Gut shot, nothing special.

I recommend picking up one of these PCBs or a Sweet Honey pedal.

It has been a busy month so far and I am way behind on my builds. I have tons of populated PCB that are just calling to be boxed. Here is a photo of the off board wiring I just finished tonight for the next 3 builds.

Next up is etching some enclosures. I’m off of work a bit early tomorrow and may try to turn some enclosures out.

Based on the Wampler Pinnacle distortion. Great sounding “Marshall in a Box” pedal that goes from low gain warm overdrive to growling high gain sound in a twist of a knob.

The PCB came from a member at Madbean forums named Pappasmurfsharem.

This is the first pedal I put in a 125B box and I over etched it a bit and lost a bit of detail in the fonts. I used the same graphics as the original but changed it up a bit. Over all I am happy with it. Side note, red metallic paint is hard to photograph.

Original Unit Voltages:
Drain / Gate
Q1 5.01 / 0
Q2 8.98 / 2.99
Q3 5.05 / 0
Q4 8.98 / 2.99
Q5 4.18 / 0
Q6 4.19 / 0
@9VDC input regulated all switches down and all pots off “0”

My building time has been a bit spotty the last 2 weeks and I wanted to keep track of what I have been working on.

I have been working on an etching design for a buddy on Madbean’s forum. It’s been a bit of a disaster since I have already ruined one 125B enclosure do to a bad etch. Will try again this week.

Working on a nice Electro-Harmonix Green Russian Big Muff on a new Madbean Mudbunny 2013 black board. I love how this this is conning out as I juts did a PCB test on my rig. Super bass heavy and gets really dirty. I added the mid control you can find on the Mayo and a few other BMP variants. I also used some vintage button transistors that were around 450 HFE. They sound great in this build.

Next up is a PCB I have had half populated for over 4 months now. The Aion Refractor is a Klon Centaur overdriven clone. I have never played with a Centaur and did not get GAS over a pedal that can fetch over $2000 these days. I finished up this PCB tonight and stuck it on the test rig and I was impressed how it sounded on my Fender Twin Reverb. Nice, natural sounding overdrive and it did clean up well if needed. I used a pair of diodes I found in my stock pile that were testing at 0.34 Vf and the original unit supposedly uses diodes that are 0.35 Vf. I will definitely box this thing up soon.

Everything I have been reading says the original “magical” germanium diodes in the Klon Centaur have a forward voltage of 0.35v. Going through my old stock of diodes all I found was 0.65v germanium diodes until I ran across the above pictured. They were consistantly giving reading of 0.34v which I think is the closest I can get from my stock. I have no idea what part number they are since there is no markings other than the Black, Yellow Orange bands.

From my Peak Atlas DCA Pro:
Test Result:
Diode junction
Red-A Green-K
Vf=0.343V at 5.00mA

Back to my build.

I finished up my first Phaser pedal last night. I like setting it at a very subtle setting and tossing a fuzz in front of it as it adds some nice motion to the sound. I have never been a fan of over wet sounding phasers but at its lower settings it sounds great. I used a PCB from Jacob over at JMK and it was an easy/solid build. I highly recommend it.

The art work on the pedal was more of an experiment to see if the fine lines would hold up to the etching. I love how the results came out but it is hard to see the art work in the photo.

Gut shot:

Behold, the Madbean Retrograde which is inturn based on the Tycobrahe Octavia. I took the etchable layout and populated this beast in under an hour, ran in the room and started tearing the paint off the walls with this pedal. This is a thick octave fuzz pedal with a switch that can remove the octave down and leave you with a very usable fuzz only effect. This pedal uses a small 42TM022 transformer that generates the octave portion of the fuzz. This is the first time I have ever worked with a transformer. As far as transistors, I used some old NPNs I had that were unmarked but sounded great in this circuit. They are the little round top button transistors.

I etched the enclosure with some lineart of a few octopus’ that my wife picked out for me.

Gut punch:

Finally got this thing done. It’s a King of Tone work alike laid out by Brejna and I etched and populated the board. All in all its 2 modified Marshall BluesBreaker pedal’s in one and I must say, it sounds fantastic. It nails that great low gain blues rock sound and then can get that pushed overdrive sound when both sides are engaged. There is also some DIP switches inside that will let you select the clipping diode configuration. This pedal just knocked my Morning Glory clone off my board.

The pedal is etched with King David sitting on his throne. The paint is actually a metallic purple but it looks more of a blue in the picture.

Gut Shot: