skyipper history

[joegagan]

a little clarification on the skyripper since it has been 6 years since the birth and probably not too many guys here now know the history.
every once in a while the fuzzfactory is mentioned in the same vein, they are interlinked but not how one might think.

I was relatively new to building fx in 2000 but had been a guitarist/inventor type for almost 30 yrs at that point, was using modded fuzz face reissue and Boss SD1 in a heavy bluesrock gigging band playing approx 125 nights a year in a 4 state area.

discovered zvex effects at a chicago music store and was heavily inspired by the tones of the wooly mammoth and fuzz factory. The tones I had been hearing in my head were finally in these little magic boxes!

without ever seeing a fuzz factory schem or attemping to reverse engineer one I accidently discovered that putting a range master in front of a fuzz face w/ a feedback loop (feeding the fuzz output back into the RM via a clickswitched 100k pot) got a lot of the same squealy feedback type oscillation etc that the 'factory did. I modded my little bastard a little further, discovering that starving the voltage of the fuzzface's Q2 down to 1.0 volt got a lot of great tones  Someone from Aron's forum sent me a little diagram (sorry, cant' remember who) of a cross-fading dual gang pot so i was able to blend between buffer and no buffer stage at the front, adding to the squealy wonderful madness.  I was very very excited and went overboard posting on the net about my findings. Within two weeks I had extensive sound samples posted online, which got a lot of response. I posted early versions of the schematic, thank yous go out to the gang at ampage and aron's for helping with suggestions early on.

It was an exciting time for fx design in general. The community was generous, and a lot of fun.

I emailed zvex right away to let him know that I had not cloned his pedal - the sonic similarities were obvious so I wanted him to know my circuit was not his... He was very gracious but also very 'short' in his response. He said that due to legal issues, his lawyers had advised him not to look at upcoming designs sent directly to him- I totally understood this. He encouraged me to continue to experiment and wished me luck. He has since always been very good to me.

In the following months I was able to analyze the Fuzz factory circuit and was amazed at how different it was from the skyripper.
Zvex designed a brilliant circuit using very few parts. the skyripper was embarrassingly full of doodads and BS but did some cool stuff the f factory will not.

I started Nine Volt Nirvana in early '01 with the intention of producing Skyrippers on a grand scale. I was overly ambitious, insisting on having a breakthrough enclosure design using skillets and trying to tool up to do a lot of the necessary machining myself etc. In the meantime still touring with my band and trying to pay all my bills with my construction job, craziness...

I pirated my way into a booth at the 01 dallas guitar show with no product to sell but with a notepad to take email addresses of prospective customers. I scared little children and adults with all the skyripper noise. i pity the people that had adjoining booths...

By early 02 it was obvious that i should produce a more conventional type pedal to get the company off the ground, the dinosaur fuzz and brontoboost were born, we sold approx 400 pedals total in 02 and 03. The company stalled before I could get the skyripper into production. I only built two of them. the prototype(000) still exists in a slightly modded form from its original format( I use it all the time , has been on many recordings etc). serial #001 was sold twice, the first guy didn't like it, i gave him his $ back and sold it to my friend Jason, who still lives in my town.

I am very grateful that so many DIY guys have taken on building it over the years. I would guess that maybe 20 or 30 of them exist in some form or another.

some things i would do differently if I redesigned it knowing what i know now:

- the buffer/nonbuffer blend pot was BEFORE the true bypass - how dumb was that? I guess i thought i wanted to buffer the other fx in my chain. In reality this was not good onstage.

-the rangemaster portion did not need to have its own DPDT, the settings were never right for me to toggle between the fuzz and treble boost anyway. just a hassle in live settings. on the redesign the rangemaster is on all the time- if you want a stand alone fuzz just build another fuzz...

bottom line, the skyripper was better left to do its unique sounds for studio and live- I was trying to make a swiss army knife, in reality that doesn't work. better to have a pedal that just does one really good (preset) sound when you stomp on it!

thanks for reading y'all

[Coriolis]

Thanks for the insight. I've yet to build a Skyripper, but only because I'm bogged down by a modular synth project (talk about sonic possibilities!).
The soundclips I've heard of your design, has certainly kept my interest alive.
BTW: Where does the Tarpit Meltdown fit in this chronology? Has it ever been commercially available?
Also, did you ever experiment with a Si version of the Skyripper?

C

[tungngruv]

Thanks for the insight Joe. I have collected a boatload of your schems, having several different versions of your Bronto Boost and Skyripper Fuzz. I totally believe the Skyripper is the most amazing pedal I have ever built or played through. I also took your advice 8 months ago and "true bypassed" the buffer part. I have spent a lot of time with the pedal, trying to somewhat document all the crazy and more standard stuff it does, and while not even coming close to the clips you had posted, I managed to find some interesting and very useable sounds. I still think that the Fuzz and Range together still gets one of the most convincing "cranked tube amp" tones I have ever heard. Great seeing you post on this forum again, thanks for the history (and for creating this Fuzz).

BTW, check this out (dial up friendly also). Skyripper, clean amp and guitar volume knob:
http://www.tungngruv.com/Tracks/05-Various%20_%203VolKnobOscillationDelayAdded.mp3

[Mark Hammer]

It does my heart good to see a posting from Joe Gagan.

Thanks for the history.  I think it also provides some useful information to beginners about the process of developing and marketing a pedal.  and finally, some folks who are new to the game may have mistaken the chill in the air when the topicof Fuz Factory comes up as an indication of Zachary Vex' character.  I don't think they truly understand how generous you and he are.  It was nice to see that in print.

Stick around Joe.  You been missed, buddy.  Missed something fierce.

[Ry]

This post could not be more timely for me.  I recently boxed my Skyripper up and was thinking of modding it to change the input buffer and modify how the rangemaster section works with the rest of the pedal.  The Rangemaster section is waaaay loud (at levels of distortion that I want) compared to the fuzz and pretty much any other pedal I'm running.

I also find that I need to tweak the fuzz section, the GE transistor I have in there is really noisy, to the point of bleeding through to my signal path, but I think this is a problem with my encolsure placement of the output jack and circuit more than anything.

Thanks, Joe!

[Ben N]

Hi, Joe, good to see you back here.

The trove of JG schematics has dwindled, I suppose not to "compete" with NVN.  Is there any chance of restoring them? 

Ben

[John Lyons]

Thanks for posting Joe!
Tungngruv and I have gone back and forth building my skyripper and it has a very nice straight forward "cranked" sound as well as enough oscillation and "blips and rips" to keep your experimental side going for hours. It's a fairly laborious wiring job with all the pots and switches, but at the end of the day I love it! I want to get to the other circuits some time as well. The clips I've heard are very tasty indeed. I have some hosted some of tungnf\gruv's clip on my sounclips page below in my signature.

If anyone wants to get a hold of any of the schematics I'm sure if you PM'd Tungngruv he would send them to you. I think they should be on line all together some place though ( Assuming Joe is ok with this) This forum has a lot more new places to house such things now.

John

[LP Hovercraft]

Thanks for the history, Joe!  My fire engine red skillethoused Skyripper is one of my all-time favorite builds.  I agree with the "swiss army fuzz" notion.  I've been recording an album with it and have a different fuzz out of that thing on each song.  Building it also taught me a lot about the tweakability of the various design elements within a ff.  Though the sound with the TB-Fuzz is phenomenal, I like having the treble booster on/off switch as the fuzz on it's own sounds great into a cranked amp.  I've gotten all kinds of compliments on my tone.  If you haven't tried the free oscillating ripper into a filter/sample and hold unit, I'd strongly recommend it.  Have any of you been able to tame the TB-Fuzz noise level?  I have to use a noise gate after mine.  I have tried AC128' and 2N404's from Small bear, but they all hiss like mad when treble boosted 

[Eirik]

I have quite a few of Joe Gagans schematichs i my hard drive. I'd be happy to post them if it's ok with Mr. Gagan.

[MartyMart]

Very cool joe, thanks for the post and welcome back

MM

[Jay Doyle]

Joe, good to see you back in these parts, sir.

Be well, take care and drop me a line when you get a chance,

Jay

[joegagan]

wow, thanks for all the replies and great comments.
Mark you are a very cool dude. You influenced me in ways I never got to acknowledge you for. thank you.

CORIOLIS QUOTE ""BTW: Where does the Tarpit Meltdown fit in this chronology? Has it ever been commercially available?
Also, did you ever experiment with a Si version of the Skyripper?
"

the tarpit was an extension of the colossal fossil(late '02) which was the dinofuzz with a hopped up third stage(incl diode clip), the tarpit added some feedback and a tonebender inspired tone control I think ( have to look at that one again) I built and sold a small handfull of tarpits but didn't keep one for myself. i think it is a really cool pedal - easy to build too

Gus smalley sent me a brilliant schem of a Si skyripper which i never got around to building. someone should try it.

Jack Orman also did design work on the version of Skyripper that everyone sees BTW

tungngroove/basicaudio - thanks for keeping the flame alive in recent years!

I encourage anyone to post anything I have ever done, with the exception of some faulty layouts for a Skyripper board that had oscillation ( skreddy changed it at his site so it isn't currently posted , pretty sure)

Ampage had a lot of my entries archived all these years but the url changes sometimes, a few schems didn't survive the transfer maybe(?) I am very grateful that the powers that be have deemed it good to leave my stuff available.

Hi JaY! Marty mart

LPhover, the noise of skyripper can be loud at times, i use a vol ped in the studio after to keep from killing my bros ears when I am not playing. My Ge for the RM portion is kinda low gain in mine tho(2SB33 toshiba)

Elrik, can you email me what you have? MY old computer is jammed up, a lot of stuff is maybe gone...

Ry, your comments about the skyripper about a week after 9/11 were very touching, i will always remember that.

I am planning to re-enter the market with a mod to a very kwazee popular fuzz pedal , stay tuned
Many other experiments over the past three years will eventually see daylight also.

[Paul Marossy]

Cool, I was wondering whatever happened to you Joe. Nice to see you pop in. 

[tungngruv]

tungngroove/basicaudio - thanks for keeping the flame alive in recent years!

Hey Joe, I hope you don't mind that I'm doing this.

http://www.tungngruv.com/index_new.html

I tried to get your OK for the second site version but you haven't been on the web much. Your Skyripper deserves way more attention. I'm hoping to bring some of that attention to you and your designs. This is just the pre site, not all links are up but all of the pages concerning you are working. Thanks again Joe.

[joegagan]

hey T that is cool , no probs ever
I really appreciate all your work. the site looks very good. Not sure if you the site space but if you could post the schems there as well people could do 'one-stop shopping' as it were.
the schems are a little hard to find over at ampage

those presets on the skyripper page are awesome!
I guess you have established the default knob layout for the S rip forevermore with all that.

[puretube]

http://sounds.ampage.org/   

happy new year, Joe!

[tungngruv]

Cool Joe, I'll post the schems on this Forum later on tonight. I have several different versions of the Skyripper, Bronto Boost, Tarpit and Dinosaur Fuzz (different revisions and dates). Also, pm me with your mailing address, and I'll mail you all schem that I have found over the past couple years using the internet wayback machine. Probably almost every revision that's out there.

[Ben N]

That's great news! I don't see myself buildig a Skyripper anytime soon (too complicated for my limited skills), but I love looking at these things and learning.  BTW, Tungngruv, great site.

[Paul Marossy]

I've always had the Skyripper on the list of things to build. I ought to just do it...

[joegagan]

wierdness:

zvex and i were born on the exact same day same year

even wierder:

Jacques (French FX legend) was also born on that exact day as well.

True story:
When i was 18 yrs old I was having a fling with a brazilian 38 yr old woman.
she took me on a day trip to juarez so she could visit her psychic. I was not interested in having my fortune told
When we got into the woman's 2nd story apartment (looked EXACTLY like the scenes in the movies about Mexican fortune tellers)
instead of reading my Gf's fortune, she grabbed my hands and looked into my face. quickly she said in spanish something to the effect that I would be famous for guitar electronics (she had no prior knowledge that i even played guitar)
This prediction baffled me, I laughed and said "no, no I just want to play guitar I don't do the elctronics"
She calmly said no, this is WAY in the future, she restated that it was for electronicos por la guitarra
this was 1978
Did she make it happen or was this for real?