burnt toast mk II

[pinkjimiphoton]

am lucky enough to build a fuzz for one of my all time heroes, the legendary dick wagner...

so here it is, schematic and vero layout, both verified...i've built two of these things, one for me, and one for dick. it's a nice loud ballsy overdriver, capable of overdriving
the front end of an amp hard, with varying levels of distortion right up to fuzz. i was playing with diodes and resistors, you'll notice that there's a couple quirks, like the 2 10k resistors in parallel...and the ge diodes into an led on one side and an 1n914 on the other...this seemed to sound the best to my ear, it crunches nice and cleans up really well via guitar knob...it's kinda a compressed, slightly treble boosted sound..
i dunno if this is a fuzz or distortion or an overdriver or a little of all three, and i'm sure it's been done to death, but it sounds great and is a simple build with even radio shack parts.

anyways...if ya build it, i hope ya like it.
peace.

schematic:



vero



i hope dick digs it, i'll be sending it off to him after i get back from pa...
will do a new edition of "stupid pedal tricks" when i get back, too...

peace!

[LucifersTrip]

thanx for posting...always cool to see another circuit.

I don't use vero, but I was a bit confused by the differences between that and the schematic (2 x 10k's, 3.3K, 6.8K, 1.5K...)

Is the schematic or the vero your final version that sounded best?

[phector2004]

Cool! Nice to see DIY circuits every now and then 

I'm looking at the schem and it's got me with a few questions:

1) Is the input cap facing the right way? I traced the +9v past the resistors and it leads straight to the negative pole of the electro cap... I remember frying a cap cause of this on fuzz face attempt #3. Might be nice if someone could double-check for reliability purposes

2) are the first two diodes (1N34A in series with 1N914) conducting DC? It probably contributes to the fuzz "type" of this pedal, but it might be cool if you could add a switch to put them after the output cap for "regular" diode clipping... a mod idea, maybe?

[pinkjimiphoton]

thanx for posting...always cool to see another circuit.

I don't use vero, but I was a bit confused by the differences between that and the schematic (2 x 10k's, 3.3K, 6.8K, 1.5K...)

Is the schematic or the vero your final version that sounded best?

hey bro.
sorry...the values on the vero are the correct ones....when i was re-working the schematic i forgot which value i had used...i remember trying it with 3.3k and 1.5k...but dropped the ball.
this is what i had on the breadboard, seemed to give the best distortion sound....the two 10k's are in parallel for a value of 5k, and the other resistor is 3.3k, so the actual total resistance was about 8.3k....anywhere between 6.8 and 10 k is probably fine, for a lot more distortion you can put a bigger resistor in place of those three...470k sounded absolutlely savage, but the gain pot didn't do too much...more of a texture control at that point, but you could get so much distortion it was actually unusable...well...not unusable, but kinda noisy. the 8.3k value seemed to sound best tho.

the only other dif is the one i built for dick used a 470k pulldown resistor on the input rather than 1 meg, seems to work fine.

and i wired the 3.3k resistor for the led directly from the led+ to the power jack.

the 10p and 221p caps can be ommitted if ya want some real high end sizzle, but it gets pretty noisy...these tame all the glitchy fizzies down enough to still be usable but a lot quieter. it's about the most gain i've gotten out of a one transistor circuit, and it's really just a hack from messing around on the breadboard with the most basic circuit for a fuzz. it's pretty phat, you can go from a nice mild overdrive to distortion to fuzz...the two controls are really interactive, can get alot of sounds out of it. some of the sounds are close to my klon(e).

check it out on the breadboard, i think you'll like it. the mpsa18's i used had an hfe of about 700 or so. i REALLY like the diode clipper section, i think that's where most of the magic happens.

[pinkjimiphoton]

Cool! Nice to see DIY circuits every now and then 

I'm looking at the schem and it's got me with a few questions:

1) Is the input cap facing the right way? I traced the +9v past the resistors and it leads straight to the negative pole of the electro cap... I remember frying a cap cause of this on fuzz face attempt #3. Might be nice if someone could double-check for reliability purposes

2) are the first two diodes (1N34A in series with 1N914) conducting DC? It probably contributes to the fuzz "type" of this pedal, but it might be cool if you could add a switch to put them after the output cap for "regular" diode clipping... a mod idea, maybe?

good eye...on the schematic, the input electro is backwards, it's right on the vero. ooops! 

actually, i think ya caught the second mistake on the schematic...the diode clipper actually comes AFTER the output cap on the vero. looks like i gotta fix that schematic up!!!

the original version of this had a switch to select between different kinds of diodes, i figured it was easier to just leave it on all the time....the differences between diodes were pretty subtle...but that was different circuit...i had 100k feeding the gain pot off the b+, which made the gain pot kinda useless. playing with the voltage divider part there can really affect the nature and quality of the overdrive. i was trying to get something that was simple and sounded good, with no unusable ranges on the knobs...balancing between them is kinda like balancing the preamp and master volume on a marshall...you can really get a lot of overdrives out of it, and it sounds nice as ya roll back the guitar...
cleans up alot like a fuzzface, kinda a slightly compressed and treble boosted sound...almost like a buffer. maybe that's what it is, heck, i don't know!!

i'm a total hack, and a newbe...and this was actually the first thing i ever got to work on my breadboard!!

low parts count, relatively standard values...if ya get a chance check it out!

[Quackzed]

that 100u bugs me.
ive used big electros and never really had an audio problem per se, but my GUT dont like it. my gut says itll sound better with a .68 or 1uf poly film or non-polarized cap. check out the muffer, looks similar. very nice as well. i built a muffer with a .001uf in cap, in parallel with a 4.7uf/100k pot to the input. really good for very treble boost to full freq boost... fwiw. but 100uf HAS to be overkill. i know i know you want to wring all the gain out. but its a bit like using a 2000 ton paperweight!

[pinkjimiphoton]

well, not a whole lotta diff between 10 and 100u really. i didn't want to use a small cap, i'm finding i don't like the frequency response as much...the extra bass going in really helps make it crunch. yah, probably overkill...but it probably would work for bass, too.

try it with different values, see what you like best! to me, this was the configuration that worked best for my ear, i tried .1u, 1u, 2.2u, 4.7u, 10u, 47u and finally the 100...it just had a "something" to it....a little more punch, again, to my ear...i tend to voice things kind of amp-like, and love celestions...i figured if it sounded good with headphones AND thru a couple of my amps (a little t-power practice amp, my hot rod princeton and my cyberdeluxe) it should be ok.

the one thing i was concerned about was it motorboating too much, but it didn't seem to do that. i come from messing with tubes, but again, i'm a hack...10,000 monkeys.

the caps you could probably use whatever your favorite value is, but again, it comes down to what you like.

breadboard it up, and see if ya like it!

i'll up a video when i get home...on the road right now, looking forward to touring the martin factory tomorrow.

[pinkjimiphoton]

here's the fixed schematic...thanks guys!!

[Quackzed]

i mean, if you find a 'sound' who cares what the numbers say! just an observation/math check, that says its bigger than needed, but really it will work for bass and its not gonna 'increase' the bass content. it'll just let it all in. so who cares
i liked the muffer alot for a slightly gritty booster. very loud! without the diodes to ground...
my own sensibilities about these single transistor circuits is that their 'personality' is often more due to their bias, wheather the signal is biased to 1/2 the supply voltage or closer to ground or v+ . in the middle, both pos and neg swings have the most headroom, but often being biased slightly closer to ground or V+ can add asymetrical dist products that seem to be slightly more gradual from slight to heavy dist, than symetrical bias...
...on that note, a 1m pot as a variable resistor one side alligator clipped in after the in cap the other to ground should work as such a bias pot and you can see or hear the effect of the bias...
just an idea for some variation on a good sounding circuit ...

[knurra]

just thinking out loud here, can differing ESR in the e-lytes play a role here? I mean the fairly large input cap of 100uF could maybe add to the impedance.
I'm reading through this http://www.nmr.mgh.harvard.edu/~reese/electrolytics/tec1.pdf

Hmm, maybe not, looks like it's in the order of 1-10 ohms in the lower frequencies.

As usual I may be horribly wrong.  

[pinkjimiphoton]

it could have something to do with ESR maybe, i mean the caps i used were freekin' HUGE physically as well...particularly the output cap!

here's a gut shot of it in process:



in my experience, physically bigger caps often seem to sound different than smaller ones of the same rating. on this one, it's a 50v filter cap, a 35 volt input cap, but the output cap despite being 35 volts is freakin' huge!!!!

so i bet esr does matter!!!

[pinkjimiphoton]

i may try adding the 1meg bias to my build, thanks for the tip!!

oh yah, forgot the most important mojo part...

there's a piece of heavy-duty velcro holding the vero to the larger 50k pot. 

[digi2t]

oh yah, forgot the most important mojo part...

there's a piece of heavy-duty velcro holding the vero to the larger 50k pot. 

Now THERE is a true gentleman. Even revealing the most intimate of pedal fabricating, mojo laden, saucey secrets 

You're a gem dude. I think your velcro really flattens my WEM's copper coil air inductor, and 1000uF cap on the mojo scale  . And to think that I went to all kinds of trouble to get them 2.5uf, 25uF, and 50uF caps! PHUEY!!! Deb works as head of a sewing department at her company, they use velcro in industrial quantities. I should have just asked her to bring some home, and saved myself a heap o' headaches. Shit man, live and learn.

Great job brother! Can't wait for the video.

[pinkjimiphoton]

thanks dino!! soon as i get home, i'll make a video...g bought me a new laptop...gotta love that girl!!

[Gordo]

That's too cool.  I was in NYC on vacation about 5 years ago and stopped at the Hard Rock in Times Square and the two primo pieces they had were the SG that Jimi used on the Dick Cavett Show and Dick Wagner's old BC Rich from the Alice days. Hope he's doing well.

[pinkjimiphoton]

dick is doing great, playing and touring again...now he's an author too, he wrote an autobiography called
"not only women bleed". really cool, loving, down to earth guy. i really enjoyed working this up for him, if he likes it, it'll be known as
"dick wagner maestro overdrive" (his idea) or the maestrodrive (mine)

[pinkjimiphoton]

just built # 2, exactly as above, it definitely works! tho it sounds a little different than dicks...but that's to be expected!!

so i guess i can safely say it's verified!!   

[pinkjimiphoton]

shoot...it MAY need a track cut on row h hole 9...i don't think i did it on the original, which may be why #2 sounds a little different...it appears to work either way...with the track cut there, the gain control will go all the way to clean...without it, it's from one range of distortion to the other.

so i guess ya can take your choice.