Completed Tone Bender Professional MKII (with pics)

[gbkd80]

On a whim I decided to whip up a ToneBender copy using the GGG layout, just to see how it would sound.  I got a set of OC75's gain-matched for it originally, and when I put them in it sounded really good, but decided that this was probably not the ToneBender to be using good OC75's in; i think I want to save those for a nice PTP job later on.  So I went fishing through my pile of generic and crap trannies and found a few that matched the correct gains and tried them out.  Ended up using a Sanyo 2SB187, 2SB186 and an unknown top hat tranny.  Everything dials in and sounds really good.  Ended with a hammered finish, clear waterslide decal for the artwork (that I ripped off from someone, can't remember but thank you!) and old-stock chicken heads.  I'm really liking this one.

[Wilhelm5]

looks excellent, nice work! Mind if I pick your brain a bit on this project? I'm a rookie looking to build my very first mkIII and I'm getting hung up on the transistors to choose. I made a post and have gotten a lot of great advice, but it never hurts to dig a little deeper, right? Ok, here it goes!

- How did you know what the proper gain value was from your pedal specs? I don't mean how to measure gain from the transistors themselves, but, for example, how did you know Q1 should be "x" Hfe, Q2 "y" Hfe, Q3 "z"Hfe? From what I've read, I believe the MkII and MkIII take lower gains at Q1 and Q2 (50-80hfe) and Q3 a higher gain (100-120 hfe).

- Being a rookie, I don't have a lot of experience testing different trannys in circuit with my effect to see what "sound" I like best, and I don't want to spend a whole lot of money buying several trannys to do so. I won't ask a question on sound as that's a personal preference and hard to answer. Instead, I'll ask about comparative sound quality between trannys. When you swapped out your OC75's for the tannys with similar gain values, did you notice a significant difference in the sound? Basically, do you get a similar sound as long your gains are relatively similar regardless of the type of tranny you use? I can't be sure, but it seems that the lower gains produce a warmer the fuzz, where the higher gains, to me, sound a little more crunchy or aggressive. I could be way off in that assessment, so please correct me if that's the case! Thanks, and again, great looking build!

[Cozybuilder]

Wilhelm-
Here's an article that might answer some of your questions regarding sound properties of germanium transistors:

http://guitarpoppa.com/?p=1380

Also, use the search feature of this website, there are a lot of threads on Tonebenders.

[stonerbox]

Beautiful and true to the original build. Well job done!