I have wanted a 1590B version of this ever since I did a clone of the original in a 1590BB enclosure. I love this pedal but hated the footprint. As I never use the boost foot switch I decided to use a toggle instead. I used the Madbean Lavache transfer and made my own PCB since his layout is fantastic with onboard pots. For the transistor I used a 2N5088 with a lower gain of 320 Hfe.
Voltages:
Q1
C 7.4v
B 0.8v
E 0.2v
My box-o-fail has grown and my box-o-notquitedone has doubled. I am going to spend the next 2 weeks working on troubleshooting my failed builds and seeing if they are recoverable. I have also started a inventory list of what is needed to finish the “Not quite done yet” pile. Most of the things needed are ICs and Pots and I, for some reason, always forget to order them. Projects that are needed to be finished up include:
I have a few other builds that I am not to happy with the sound of and I need to spend some time with them to see if I made a mistake or if they need some tweaking.
I got myself yet another Electro-Harmonix big muff variant PCB this week. User DutchMF from Madbean Forums has made a flexible Big Muff layout to achieve as many mods as possible on one board. Here are some notes from DuchMF.
I’ve been working with Eagle for quite a while now, but never made anything that I thought would be of any use to you guys…. Until now!! Taking JuanSolo’s Muff spreadsheet as my starting point, and with a lot of looking at the Mudbunny schematic and several online resources, I’ve designed a pcb that allows one to build all the Muff version from Juan’s spreadsheet without any off-board or added on components. You can build either a 3 or 4 knob version, with options for a 3-in-line or a triangle layout by setting a pair of jumpers.
Board came in last week and now I have to decide what to build on it. I am thinking a Supercollider or another pharaoh. Not to sure yet.
A user over at BYOC was turning his hobby into a business and I like some of the ideas he came up with so far and wanted to make some notes.
Goal: Design unique guitar pedals that appeal to a wide range of consumers.
Business Rules:
There are some great ideas listed and it gives me a lot to think about. When working with friends I want to make sure they are happy with what I build and feel confident in using the pedal I have built for them. I will need to come up with my own business rules. Right off the bat I would say the “Limited reverse engineering capabilities” is not important to me. I really like to share the things I build and seeing how I rely on the DIY community for my projects, I would give right back.
I found this post to be informative and wanted to archive it. It’s no surprise that Jon gave a great answer. He has a great way explaining things.
Being “most desirable ones” has very little to do with whether the transistors will be “the most useful ones.” Look up the polarity and the gain range. Otherwise, just test a couple transistors out of each bag if you have a DMM that does that; if the gain is really low, like under 40, there are very few guitar pedals that will even work with them.
Your best bet for figuring out what the mot valuable part number is is to look at the schematics for a bunch of old fuzz pedals and then write down the part number. Not the series (like “OC”), but the specific part number. Then look up the equivalent transistor from other companies. New Market, for instance, is a brand name, but the same transistor construction as in the 213 and 275, which are very valuable, have different part numbers by RCA or Telefunken, for instance.
Here are the most useful “numbers”:
PNP 40-80: Q1 in classic Fuzz Face
PNP 80-130: Q2 in classic Fuzz Face and Q3 in a MKII, Three-knob bender, or Buzzaround
NPN 40-50: Q1 in a low-gain NPN fuzz face
NPN 60-70: Q2 in a low-gain NPN fuzz face
PNP 40-60: Q1 in a Percollator
PNP 20-40: Q1 and Q2 in Tonebender MKII, but requires moderate leakage
PNP 70-80: classic Rangemaster, requires low leakage; Skreddy Screwdriver if moderate or high leakage
This was a cool post by garrobos on FSB
Distortion Pedal Genealogy
Fuzz Family
Circuit type: discrete transistor gain stages.
Original design: 1962 Gibson Maestro Fuzz Tone.
Influential derivatives: 1965 Sola Sound ToneBender, 1966 Dallas Arbiter Fuzz Face.
Muff Family
Circuit type: discrete transistor gain stages with limiting diodes.
Original design: 1969 Electro Harmonix Big Muff Pi.
Influential derivatives: 1974 Maxon D&S, 1974 Ibanez Overdrive.
Distortion Family
Circuit type: op amp gain with hard clipping diodes to ground.
Original design: 1973 MXR Distortion plus.
Influential derivatives: 1978 Boss Distortion, 1978 Pro Co Rat.
Overdrive Family
Circuit type: op amp gain with soft clipping diodes in op amp loop.
Original design: 1974 Maxon OD808.
Influential derivatives: 1977 Boss Overdrive, 1979 Ibanez Tube Screamer.
Tube Family
Circuit type: tube gain.
Original design: 1978 Butler Audio Tube Driver.
Influential derivatives: Chandler Tube Driver, Tube Works Tube Driver.
From 1978 to date, the contribution in the development of distortion pedal circuits has been iterative.
I wanted to make a Rat pedal for my bass and decided to add a blend knob for the dry signal. There are many options in the DIY scene for this but I went with JMK’s blend PCB. I etched and populated one to test with and I really like the results.
I placed my first Mouser order on Sunday November 3rd. I used the shipping option of USPS just to see how long it will take to get to me. I received a shipping notice on Monday November the 4th. So buy the fact that my order was processed and sent out in 1 day has already impressed me.
I hope to use Mouser for the parts I can not get from Tayda Electronics
Order Revived: November 7th
I am very happy with the transaction and will definitely order from them again. Standard USPS only took 3 days so my next transaction I will try their FedEX service and see if its any faster.
-This is unverified – Hope to verify it this weekend.
There are some hard working people at Madbean forum that have been working on a great spreadsheet with a bunch of Big Muff variants on it. I wanted to contribute is some way and I found that no one has picked apart the LSTR for the list.
There was a schematic that was posted in FSB forums.
Mark over at Tagboard Effects made a vero layout for it.
Since we at the Madbean forums use the Mudbunny PCB as a primer, I have matched the parts from both the FSB schematic and the Mudbunny and this is what I came up with.
This is the BOM for the Black Arts LSTR built on a Mudbunny PCB.
| Resistors | Capacitors | Diodes | |||
| R1 | 1M | C1 | 100n | D1 – D4 | 1N914 |
| R2 | 39K | C2 | 560p | D5 | 1N4001 |
| R3 | 100K | C3 | 100n | ||
| R4 | 470K | C4 | 100n | Transistors | |
| R5 | 100R | C5 | 560p | Q1-Q4 | MPSA12 |
| R6 | 15K | C6 | 100n | ||
| R7 | 1K | C7 | 100n | Pots | |
| R8 | 15K | C8 | 560p | SUS | 100KA |
| R9 | 100K | C9 | 100n | TONE | 250KB |
| R10 | 470K | C10 | 1n | MID | 50KB |
| R11 | 100R | C11 | 10n | VOL | 100KA |
| R12 | 15K | C12 | 100n | ||
| R13 | 15K | C13 | 100n | ||
| R14 | 100K | C14 | 100uF | ||
| R15 | 470K | C15 | 100n | ||
| R16 | 100R | ||||
| R17 | 15K | ||||
| R18 | 68K | ||||
| R19 | MID POT | ||||
| R20 | 470K | ||||
| R21 | 100K | ||||
| R22 | 15K | ||||
| R23 | 1K2 | ||||
| R24 | 100R | ||||
Excel Spreadsheet in juansolo’s format
Update: populated the Mudbunny this weekend but I need to do the off board wiring. I hope to work on this tonight.
Updated:
Populated
I love the name that Madbean choose for this pedal. Makes me laugh every time I see the name. This is a Wampler Triple Wreck work alike. It’s a high gain pedal for that lovely metal sound.
It’s now etched, now it’s time to populate. To the cave!