Fuzz pedal for mild OD?

[amonte]

This is probably a bit of an odd question, but here goes...

I've got a Vox Tonebender RI that I got many years ago and used twice (never liked the sound).  Last night, I switched both the input and output caps to .1uF, which resulted in a much fuller and fatter sound.  Still not what I was looking for - BUT - when I rolled the guitar knob down far enough, I was able to get pretty close to a nice mild "just breaking up" type tone.  Not that bad for chording work.

So I started thinking about building a fuzz pedal that was a bit more restrained - something that would get me close to this sound but without the need to roll the volume knob.

Is there a design out there already that does this?  Or is just a question of tweaking an existing design?

[smashinator]

If you want to mod that pedal some more, perhaps you could just slap a resistor/pot inline with the input of the effect.

[amonte]

yeah, I was thinking of going that route as well...

[brett]

Pedals with variable gain are a good choice...Distortion Plus, Tubescreamer, and my favourite, the Bluesbreaker.  
Also, assymetric clipping (like the SD-1) helps.  Search the archives for modding pedals for assymetry.
cheers

[Branimir]

amonte, i was thinking about that kind of pedal too, i like to drive my easyvibe with a just a bit distorted signal.. pronuances the vibe better..

heh...
a low gain fuzz  :lol:

[petemoore]

For diode clipper builds, to tune to more of an OD sound, if you're using perfboard, consider installing an 8 pin IC socket where the clipping diode connections are [I'd socket at least the input cap also], this way you can vary the amount of clipping by trying diode types/configurations in the clipping position.
 Doubling the diodes
 -->l-->l
 l<--l<--
 makes a different sound, less hard clipping, also look around at all the mods...try different value caps across the diodes etc.

[amonte]

Thanks for the tip, pete - I tend to do that with TS style builds.  I actually was hoping to try and do it with a FuzzFace style circuit - just to try something a bit different I guess.

I'm going to add a pot for rolling off the signal of the guitar coming in (rather than using the volume pot).  I'm also going to use the Easy Face's input cap blend to roll off lows, and a hi cut at the end to roll off some treble.

[petemoore]

I was about to suggest a FF, figured you'd already tried that or knew you wanted a different OD tone.
 FF's are very tunable CCt's. If you're ordering stuff, Brett found 2n2369's are low gain devices, and My FF's and TB's use them for the Q with the feedback R on the base [Q1 of FF, Q2 of TB].
 As easy and cheap as FF's are to produce, making one a 'Full EZ Mod' version....sockets for Q's Caps...Trimpot on Q2 for biasing...is probably worth the trouble.
 I always want to ask 'what amp' when talking FF, they can sound not like themselves at all when plugged into one amp from another, FF's seem to like driving a tube[s IME. Some reports of FF's sounding great through SS amps exist, I haven't had so much luck that way myself.

[Ge_Whiz]

Tried the Sili-Face II at ROG? I haven't meself, but according to the description it could be what you're looking for.

[amonte]

I was JUST looking at that and was going to come back here and post it.  Ya beat me to it.  

[petemoore]

Use of Jfets may be what you want.
 ROG Amp Sims
 Mini Booster
 Fetzer or Stratoblaster
 [Many others]
 Excellent sounding Boosts with mild distortions can be had with Fet gain stages. Alone as per schem, modded, Mixed 'n matched etc.
 If you start with something like an 18 or Supreaux, It's pretty easy to dial in nice Amp OD tones, or drive it to distort harder by adding another Q stage to the input.
 Some of the 'larger amp sims have added Q stages and mucho voicing options, these may or may not be wanted...I usually just tune to taste and don't 'twiddle' so much anyway...nice to have knobs to do the tuning/dialing in, but simpler circuits can usually be tuned to do the same thing, they're just not as 'instantly flexible'.

[jmusser]

The Rex's fuzz pretty much does that as far as I'm concerned. It will overdrive and then breakover to a fuzz depending on where you have the gain set. Aron's Rocket box does well with that too.

[Paul Marossy]

The Black Cat OD-1 can get a pretty wide range of tones...

[Torchy]

crp

[Mojah63]

I just built this Fuzz and it sounds more like an overdrive than a true wild FuZz:

http://fuzzcentral.tripod.com/axisfacesi.html


I put a .22uf cap in front of the smooth(50k) control to cut some bass from my strat and changed the 100k feedforward resistor to 47k.  For some reason changing the 1uf input cap to .22 messes up the tone but putting it in front of the smooth control works great.  It does the slight breakup sound really well and cleans up with the guitar volume..

P