You've been GRISTLEIZED

Had the privileged of building a Gristleizer over the holiday. Was a part of the gift I sent out for this years ILF Secret Santa. I decided to put a twist on the typical design, and built it into a treadle enclosure...a re-purposed crybaby wah for the curious. Here's a little background info on the circuit.

It's hard to explain what all the circuit does, but tremolo/ringmod/broken amp/idk? Tons of control and options. Treadle controls speed, then depth, bias, & volume are on the right. The left has a vca/vcf toggle, and a rotary switch for the waveshape.

Lots of wiring! I ripped the colorful wires from an old computer, woohoo.

Productivity boost

Here's a great sounding circuit. The pre/boost section of the old echoplex's in stompbox form. Has vol and fat control, & a 17v tap (if you need it). Thinking about building another tailored specifically for bass, though this sounds good with it, I find myself maxing the fat control. 

Pcb came from Madbean

Here's another prototyping breadboard. I'll be selling these soon, so this is the proto of sorts. I also have some stuff I didn't want to tear down on my main breadboard, so needed this.

FUZZZZ

Custom fuzz & another Big Muff. The custom has an oscillation footswitch with control (beam), texture (focus), and volume (target). The big muff has a normal/low gain switch, & two different types of clipping switches for the first and second stages. Also has a feedback stompswitch & mids control. Both pedals sounds fantastic!

I actually put sockets on the normal/low gain switch, so it can be changed to anything really. For instance, you could make both settings higher gain than the original if you wanted.

Both enclosures came from PedalPartsPlus. The turret board is made by me, and the muff pcb came from Madbean.

A new moon

This one has been a bit delayed. You may remember the enclosure I space painted a while back...

I call it Ramrod. Inside is a SuperFET boost (SHO workalike) and a Whisker Biscuit. The WB is similar to the EHX Big Muff but, with much fewer parts. It has socket'd transistors for fine tuning, & sockets for additional tone caps. They can be use independently or cascaded (boost>fuzz).



PCBs came from culturejam, who can be contacted at circuitworkshop.com or forrestwhitesides.com

Ptp Fuzzrite!

I was sent this photo from the guy I eventually sold the fuzzrite to...

Turret Boards Are The Tish!

Here are some more point to point builds. I'm running out of turret board! BTW, the layouts I've been using lately are all made by IvIark. They are verified! (If they weren't already).

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This is a clone of the DAM Meathead. I've never used the real deal, so honestly can't say how they compare, but this one sounds great.

Up next is a clone of the Devi Ever Soda Meiser. I added a momentary switch for the chaos mode! This is the coolest pedal I've made in a while.

Giant knobs from days of yore! If you look closely, you will see 2 resistors in series towards the bottom right. This is what happens when  you don't have the right value on hand; Improvise!

Now, I'll leave you with a preview of the next post...

1590a's & Bazz Fuss's

Had this chrome looking 1590a in my stock for a while. Too chrome to paint. Decided to get something made into it today, and being fuzz lover, went with the Bazz Fuss. A well worn, well known, dead simple fuzz circuit...that I had never built before. Low parts count (5), easily mod-able, and a pretty good sound. It's a good idea to socket the output capacitor.

NOS ftw

Finally got my hands on NOS components and turret board. Decided to build and Electra. Used a 2n3904(modern) for the transistor, and for diodes a 1n34a and ba100. The resistors are Allen Bradly. Expect to see more builds like this.

Layout courtesy of Forrest Whitesides

From out the junk drawer

This Logan 5 pseudo ring mod was another project that got pushed aside. Happy now that it's up and running, cause it sounds cool as hell, and one of my favorite finishes no doubt. Will try and get clips up. Here's the project page for anyone interested.

A little something different

This one was in the drawer for a while. An Electro Harmonix Pulsar, the older/original version. It didn't work right when I first put it together, so off to the side it went. Pulled this and a couple others out recently and got them all working.

A friend gave me the pcb, but it was made @ Pigeon FX. The layout used, along with more info on tweaks, fixes, etc can be found at Tonepad. I highly recommend swapping the listed rate control value of a100k with b10k. It will fix the sweep issues.

I'm still working on my etching (as if you couldn't tell). The extra switch will momentarily change to a square wave shape as long as it's held down.

New Face

In one of my earliest posts, I showed an orange Fuzz Face that I had painted (but not built). That was about 2 years ago so I decided to repaint it...it had some chips here and there and some of the labels were coming off.
Next to the FF, there is a voltage divider I made out of boredom. Had a guy ask me to build him one last month so figured why not two? A diagram of how to build your own can be found @ Beavis Audio.

Another shot of the voltage divider. I used a vintage carbon comp from a busted record player, and leads clipped from other builds.

This is the divider for the customer...love that knob!

30 down!

It's been about a month now, since I started building for another company. As of a week or so ago, there have been 30 pedals built. Waiting on some enclosures, etc, and then it's back to work.

Booyakashah

Loading up on parts. Some of these are from the guy I'm working for. Others are for my own builds.

Enclosures!

Working!

Recently started doing some building for a certain boutique pedal company (that will not be named yet). I'm really happy to be doing it, and hope it lasts! I've been a fan of this company for a couple years now so this is cool as hell, haha.

ILFuzzFace

Last year, I built my first and only fuzz face. Got a loaded FF board, all NOS, from Forrest at circuitworkshop/capsnsuch.com. I played with a few ideas for the finish, until I got something I really liked.

I started with a few extra ILoveFuzz stickers. Two, actually. Some placement, fine trimming, and we're left with a face/skull. A Fuzz Face circuit in an enclosure with a face made from the words "ILoveFuzz." Yeap.

After the stickers were in place, I used a two part epoxy over the top. Inspiration for this came from Sonic Crayon and McSpunckle. I then sanded the sides down flush. Would have been much easier with a belt sander.

If you're going to give the epoxy top a try, I'll offer two tips: Drill before laying the epoxy down. You may notice some discoloration where the knobs and 3pdt switch are. This is from the resin pulling away from the enclosure. Also, as you can see lots of bubbles formed in the finish. A better quality epoxy may help with this, as well as proper mixing. McSpunckle said using a torch will remove the air bubbles as well.

The small pot on the side is the bias. Goes from smooth to splatty, and sounded great. I'll have to see if its current owner will record a clip for me. I got this thing finished on Halloween, so the theme was more perfect. Ironically enough, I sent this out as a Christmas present for Ryan from Dr. Scientist, in last years ILF Secret Santa.

I wish I had gone back and trimmed the wires down a bit and cleaned it up, but it's not too bad.

Space Saver

Haven't got anything new ready to post yet, so here's some more projects from back then.

Cinos Titan, aka another Sonic Titan workalike.

The Sleasy Drive, a workalike of Joe Davisson's Easy Drive

Footswitch for my Sears 40xl

Brass-fromthepast-Master

My first brassmaster build. So sad that I didn't get enough for two of these cause let me tell you, I did NOT want to send it off when she was all finished up. Sounds fantastic, with tons of tonez on tap. Maybe I can get Nate (the recipient of this gem), to toss up a clip eventually. My computer was AWOL for a few weeks so I couldn't make clips...at least we can look at it, right?

The finish was something I tried to to keep close to the original. My initial design was actually almost just like the orig, but I changed my mind last minute. I actually used hammerite type paint for the triangle, for some depth or added effect.

Here's the Spritzer, getting acquainted with some of my other pedals. The name "Spritzer" comes from a Maestro ad from back in the day. Talks about a musician named Harvey Spritzer, who's lost work due to the introduction of the Brassmaster.

What the insides look like. As you can see, this was quite the squeeze. Now if only I had made a drill template the first time so I don't have to measure all that out again for the next ones. Ideally, the power leads (black and red wire right up the middle) would have been under the board, but there just wasn't enough space. The LED is directly under the dc jack, up against the pcb.

Thanks to General Guitar Gadgets, for supplying the goods for me to build this. They have complete Kits available, with options for enclosures, predrilled, etc. You could also buy just the PCB if you have the parts around, or are trying to save money. I recommend the full kit, as it will save you tons of time and hassle sourcing individual parts. If this is your first build, I might try something simpler as all those connections can become overwhelming rather quickly.

Upcoming

I'm working on a few builds right now, so I will have new stuff up soon!

My recent day off

Finally got a day off after a couple weeks, so it was time to build something! 

A long time friend, Paul, painted an enclosure for me many months ago. I had it sitting around forever waiting for the right circuit to match it with. Decided on the AMZ Jfet Splitter, by Jack Orman. Takes your input signal and splits it into 2 (or more) equal outputs.

Something like this can be very useful with some planning. For instance, I've been using it to run modulation to the effect channel (trem & verb) on my silvertone, while the other out runs dirt to my "clean" channel. Makes it easy to set things in the mix. With both channels running together, you can EQ them slightly different, which makes for some great, full tone. Of course you could also make any effect stereo...think of the possibilities with things like delays that are already stereo...

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This here is an Electra type circuit designed by Renegadrian. Gives more gain to the original. The Lovepedal Woodrow can be built with the same layout. I have everything socketed (good thing too), so I'm still tweaking to my liking. As it was, way too loud and trebly. The toggle switch will be for swapping clipping diodes most likely, or maybe cap values for treb/bass.

The enclosure is from a walco boost type pedal, that I actually had a diff boost built into for a while. There was an extra hole on the bottom front from the orig layout, so I decided to make this a "window" for the LED. I glued in some foggy vinyl material to diffuse it and seal the opening.