El Diablo fuzz build report and fun Point-to-Point layout with too many picture

[Pushtone]

This is Andrews El Diablo fuzz done point to pint style.
The schematic is found in the schematics section of his gallery.
LINK TO SCHEMATIC

This is my third shot at a point to point layout for a stompbox.
I'm really into it and all fired up now that a local supplier is stocking these cool little boards.

Point-to-point is a great, quick, easy way to layout a circuit.
They can be adapted to perf or vero board. Check out a tube tremolo I did this way on perf.
It's also fun to do and if you can get some cool NOS mojo parts, the builds look great too.
Remember Dragonfly's Turret board pedals from a year ago?

I don't have the cool mojo parts but this style of building is rock solid and I think should last 100 years baring any unforeseen electromagnetic pulse.

I did the Valve Caster on the 10 lug board and now I've drawn a layout for Andrews El Diablo using the 20 lug board, and built it.
It's a good fit for a circuit of around 16 parts. Here the latest layout with output cap switching.




The Sound:
Totally quiet! No hum at all. Is that the circuit or the P-t-P build?
As promised by Andrew, the fuzz is fat and gainy. I like it.
Sounds very good  as an overdrive with the TEXTURE at min.
With the TEXTURE at max you get fat violin sustain.
The fuzz is thick with lots of wool (bass).

The stock circuit sounded best with my Telecaster. (no surprise there eh Andrew?)
With humbucker there is a little to much wool for me.


Mods:
I built it straight and it was loud, like a lot of the circuits I've built.
I got some of Aron's germanium diodes and so the first thing I did was to swap out the 1N914 with the germ diodes.
The sound didn't change but the level dropped a bit. I could turn up the VOL past 9:00 o'clock, so I left the germs in.



Next I noticed I could add in two different output caps and switch between them with a SPDT by moving some parts to the right.
The bass is huge out of the El Diablo in my room. I felt I needed to roll off some lows at the output cap.
I settled on 0.15uF and 0.0047uF output caps. Quite a bit lower than the values on the schematic.
Sounds good to me on both a Fender Twin and an Epi VJr into a 4x12 cab with passive humbuckers.


The Build:
I used a box from www.pedalenclosures.com,
they are very beefy and thick walled. Worth the money for sure.
All parts are on the board except for the LED resistor, which is shrink wrapped in-line at the LED itself.


A roll of masking tape made a great soldering stand. Got lucky there.
I put all the parts in place before soldering a node.


Here's the final build with the added output cap switch.







This was a super fun pedal to build this way. Now I can add P-t-P to the list of circuit "media" I've used to make a pedal.
All that's left now is to make a pedal with a tortilla board.




Dave

[foxfire]

nice build report and even nicer build. rylan

[Renegadrian]

All that's left now is to make a pedal with a tortilla board.

I just had dinner at a local mexican restaurant near the Vatican, went there with my GF and I was telling her some about my builds...But the tortillas were too good to put components on!!! 

[8mileshigh]

Dave,

Your build looks amazing !!!  I'm going to give this a shot one of these days.

Chris

[Solidhex]

Totally radical Pushtone

  I wholeheartedly acknowledge the fact that point to point doesn't have any real impact on the tone of a pedal but its fun as hell. Plus whenever you  pull the back off you get the whole "neato" factor. I plan on doing some more soon.

--Brad

[andrew_k]

Nice work Dave, but your layout has an error -- check the orientation of D1 and D2

I have an unused 1790NS that is begging for a big build; maybe the point-to-point tube tremolo; once I finish off all the unboxed circuits laying around already!

[Mark Hammer]

I suppose the nice thing about p-2-p turret builds is that nothing is hidden.  That can prevent the sort of mis-connections that occur when the parts are on one side, the connections are underneath.  Heck, only yesterday, I found myself having to unsolder several connections on a perfed project because in the flipping over, I had tied a resistor to the wrong pin of an IC.  Of course, now that I think of it, I don't imagine turret board like that shown will provide much respite for users of chips, will it?

[culturejam]

Very nice build, my friend.

Other than eBay, I can't seem to find retailers who carry the tag strips. If anyone knows of US retailers of these wondrous little gizmos, please let me know.