a good fuzz for harmonica?

[foxfire]

a buddy of mine wants a "vintage" sounding fuzz to use with his high impedance mic. i think he has one of those green bullets. any suggestions?

[Mark Hammer]

Does he want to capture a vintage harmonica sound or take a vintage sound and fuzz it up?  I know that when I brought my little tweed Princeton to a jam once, I encouraged the harp player (who was also using the de rigeur bullet mic) to switch from plugging into his clean clean clean Twin to plugghing into my Princeton.  The result was "instant Chicago" with all the compression and balls he could have wanted.  His response was "You're not leaving here with that amp tonight".

the difference between the two amps was in the sensitivity of the input stage.  The bullet mic already puts out a pretty beefy signal for a mic (the magic of crystal mics compared to dynamics), so feeding it to an input stage that "buckles under pressure" nails the desired tone.  Some may disagree, but I imagine some of the ROG FET-based amp sims might be what your buddy wants.

[magikker]

http://www.angelfire.com/music/harmonica/ampdeffects.html

I've seen the EH MicroSynth used on Harp it was pretty amazing.

Biggest deal with Harp effects is that gain is often a bad thing. Feedback is so so so painful on a harp.

Sooner or later I am going to build a passive diode clipping box for the harp similar to the ones some people put into guitars.

[puretube]

EF86 ...

[foxfire]

Does he want to capture a vintage harmonica sound or take a vintage sound and fuzz it up?  I know that when I brought my little tweed Princeton to a jam once, I encouraged the harp player (who was also using the de rigeur bullet mic) to switch from plugging into his clean clean clean Twin to plugghing into my Princeton.  The result was "instant Chicago" with all the compression and balls he could have wanted.  His response was "You're not leaving here with that amp tonight".

the difference between the two amps was in the sensitivity of the input stage.  The bullet mic already puts out a pretty beefy signal for a mic (the magic of crystal mics compared to dynamics), so feeding it to an input stage that "buckles under pressure" nails the desired tone.  Some may disagree, but I imagine some of the ROG FET-based amp sims might be what your buddy wants.

asked him and he said, "both." he has i little ss fender. wants to someday get a little tube fender.
what do you think about a rangemaster or hogs foot/lpb1 with a litlle bit of clipping from some ge diodes? bascically like what Magikker suggested minus the passive part. and thanks for all the suggestions everyone. i will tell him to start looking for an ef86 based amp to.

[magikker]

My Dad's main instrument is the harp. When I got into effects I had him play through all kinds of stuff pretty much everything that me or my brother had. He liked the tubescreamer a bit but it made him prone to feedback. If you don't mind wating till next week before embarking on this journey. I've got a couple of my effects, my green bullet, and a lee oskar harp with me here this summer. Well, plus the amp, and the stuff to record. blah blah blah...

Anyways, I can record my NYC reissue Big Muff Pi, a TS9-DX, Amp distortion, and I have a fuzz face that is built but I'm guessing i've got a miss biased transistor due to the fact I only get sound when I get the strings really hard. Which should be fixed soon... I hope. Either way. If sound clips of those would be useful to you, remind me monday or anytime after and I'll make them for you.  Just let me know where to send them or post them and I'll do it. If people are really curious about what distortions work on a harp, I'll grab my microsynth next time I'm at home and get sound clips of that.

As far as amps go a great bet is the Pro Junior, which by amp standards is cheap... Though, most people do mod them before they become great harp amps (I got one, that needs moding) expect to see people replace the speakers so they don't sound so boxy and to replace the preamp tube with one thats lower gain. Otherwise its a great amp that can get penlty gritty.

[foxfire]

My Dad's main instrument is the harp. When I got into effects I had him play through all kinds of stuff pretty much everything that me or my brother had. He liked the tubescreamer a bit but it made him prone to feedback. If you don't mind wating till next week before embarking on this journey. I've got a couple of my effects, my green bullet, and a lee oskar harp with me here this summer. Well, plus the amp, and the stuff to record. blah blah blah...

Anyways, I can record my NYC reissue Big Muff Pi, a TS9-DX, Amp distortion, and I have a fuzz face that is built but I'm guessing i've got a miss biased transistor due to the fact I only get sound when I get the strings really hard. Which should be fixed soon... I hope. Either way. If sound clips of those would be useful to you, remind me monday or anytime after and I'll make them for you.  Just let me know where to send them or post them and I'll do it. If people are really curious about what distortions work on a harp, I'll grab my microsynth next time I'm at home and get sound clips of that.

As far as amps go a great bet is the Pro Junior, which by amp standards is cheap... Though, most people do mod them before they become great harp amps (I got one, that needs moding) expect to see people replace the speakers so they don't sound so boxy and to replace the preamp tube with one thats lower gain. Otherwise its a great amp that can get penlty gritty.

cool, very cool. thanks

[brett]

The Epi Junior sounds great for the price and breaks up in a really nice way.
As puretube indicated, some tube are better than others for the task.
The EF86 is a contender, but so are several low-wattage tubes, including the common EL84, as found in early Marshalls (in class AB for more power), and the Junior (in Class A for some nice low-wattage clean before braking up).
To get the Chicago sound you might want to degrade the signal.  Those early mikes had weak bass, weak treble and a couple of strong resonant peaks.  I haven't built one, but the purple peaker is designed to put a peak into the signal.
If you want to really get serious about old-fashioned tone, you'll probably want to run the signal through a (cheap) audio "coupling" transformer.  They are readily found in old transistor radios, and range from quite nasty ones (ie sound degrading) to reasonably clean.
Search the archives if you are interested in using an audio transformer
cheers

[magikker]

whelp I just finished up a NPN silicon Fuzzface with a pair of NTE123A.... So I ought to be able to post that too this week.... I'll start recording when I get home from work tomorrow.