Vintage Pedal: EHX Small Stone v4
Vintage Pedal: EHX Small Stone v3
This is another freebie I got from a friend since It was having problems. After further inspection I found the power was grounding out on the enclosure. I asked if he wanted it back since I fixed it and he said he bought the nano version and was happy with it.
This is the 3rd version of the Small Stone pedal by Electro-Harmonix and can be identified by the lack of LED as opposed to the 4th version which has the LED. The 3rd version has 2 LM13600AN and one LM324N ICs and is considered by many to be the stronger and more balanced sounding phaser of all the other versions.
EDIT: All the above would be true but my unit looks to be the a 3rd version enclosure with 2nd version guts. Mine has the 4 EH1048 OTAs chips like the 2nd version. I will need to do some more research and see if this is from the factory like this or was a rehouse/repair. I would not be surprised if this came from EHX like this since they are so inconsistent with the builds.
Vintage Pedal: EHX Deluxe Electric Mistress
This is a classic analog flanger made by Electro-Harmonix. This pedal seems to be the V3 from 1980-81 due to the model EH-5150-D on the PCB but I have not found a red PCB v3 before like this one. The inconsistencies make it so hard to track down exact information on this unit. I also do not think these are the original knobs.
Partscaster almost done
I got this Squier Classic Vibe body I got in a trade and have been sitting on it a few weeks. The neck is the matching Classic vibe neck I picked up cheap and it got here today. Just finished putting this together and setting it up (which I am still learning how) and I love this thing so far. I went to Guitar Center yesterday and played a few American and Mexican strats since I wanted a baseline for the setup and I wanted something to compare it to. This thing blows a Mexican Strat out of the water with its build quality and over all sound but I still love the necks on an American Strat.
What I like:
- The finish is great looking and the gold anodized pickguard is the standard official Fender 50’s 8-hole sold on the Fender store (Item# 0992143000)
- The neck does not feel cheap and soft/flimsy.
- The guitar is a nice weight and definitely feels solid. This is one of the things I love about the Squier Classic Vibe and Vintage Modified series, the weight of the guitars.
- The stock pickups do not sound bad at all. Pretty easy to dial in that “Strat” sound. They do seem to lack some of the low end I’m used to with my Jaguar (Might be the tone cap).
Not fond of:
- The bridge feels like pot metal and not a “long term” part. This and the saddles have to be changed out ASAP.
- If the tone cap replacement does not help the low end, I will be replacing the pickups with either some GFS or Tonerider pickups.
- Not a fan of the antique white knobs and pickup covers against the olympic white body. I will replace it all with white plastics.
Looking forward to making this a very playable guitar and learning about properly setting up a guitar along the way. There are some great resources for the Squier series guitars and lately I have been trolling the Strat-Talk forums Squire section.
What things am I looking at changing?
- Bridge – GFS “Made in Mexico” bridge replacement or the Brass Block model here.
- Nut – Bone nut
- Wiring – Full kit with CTS pots and Switchcraft jack etc.
- Plastics – Fender Pure Vintage kit in eggshell white.
- Pickups – GFS 1959 Strat Texas Wound Pro or Tonerider City Limits.
All in all I am only $160 dollars invested in this guitar so far. I do not mind sending some money on it to turn it into a “daily player” by any means. Remember, a Mexican Fender 50’s Classic series Strat goes for about $799 retail.
Stratocaster Tone of the Stars
Saw this posted on TGP and found it funny to see how he summed up the pickup selection switch. All in all it is a nice tidbit of info but there are many factors involved in the musicians mentioned below to make this accurate in my opinion. So think of this info as a “just for fun” kind of info.
– neck = Jimi, Hank Marvin
– neck + mid = SRV, John Mayer
– middle = Rory Gallagher
– middle + bridge = Mark Knopfler
– bridge = David Gilmour, Ritchie Blackmore, Jeff Beck, Hank Marvin, Eric Johnson…
Vintage’ish Pedal: EHX Double Muff
In 1969 Electro-Harmonix came out with a Muff Fuzz which was the same form factor as the LPB-1 that plugged directly into your amplifier and had a switch to turn it on and off. Over the years people wanted more overdrive out of the muff fuzz and people started stacking them. Electro-Harmonix then introduced the Double Muff (Can’t find a production date) that was 2 Muff Fuzz circuits cascaded in one box.
Vintage Pedal: EHX Clone Theory
I aquired this 1977 Clone Theory from ebay a few years ago. It was a bit harder than I thought to find an original one that did not break the bank. This is the first version for around 1977 with the SAD1024 IC and its in pretty good shape for its age. I have read a lot on these and found that this effect was responsible for some of the great sounds of Peter Hook (Joy Division/New Order) and Robin Guthrie (Cocteau Twins)
Cynical Distortion
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”
Vintage Pedal: EHX Small Stone v2
This was a freebee from a friend that did not care for the small stone sound in general. It needed a bit of cleanup and a switch replacment (which I took from a broken version 3) and it was good to go.
The version 2 came out in 1979 and the circuit was not changed much from the version 1. It still used the EH1048 Operational Transconductance Amplifiers (OTA) chips. The Small Stone is a 4 stage phase shifter with one additional stage for feedback, which can be activated using the “Color” switch. At the time the only pedal that was compaired to the Small Stone was the MXR Phase 90 but instead of OTA’s it used matched FET transistors.
I love the old Electro-Harmonix PCB traces, they were like artwork.
The version 2 Small Stone uses the EH1048 Operational Transconductance Amplifiers (OTA) shown below:
What’s Next?
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.
