First build! A GGG Big Muff

[vortrab]

Just completed my first working build, and had to share.

A while ago I went on a quest to find a good fuzz box for my bass guitar. Like many bassists, I settled on the Big Muff Pi. Being a cheapskate, however, I ordered a Russian reissue. It sounded great, and I loved it! It broke a week later. So I sent it back, and got another one, which also sounded great, and also broke a week later. I didn't bother trying a third.

I can build one of these way better than Sovtek can, I thought to myself... Not that I'd ever built any sort of electronics in my life, of course. So, I read up a little bit on building stompboxes, ignoring all the sage warnings that I was about to spend more money for more work than I realized. I found a schematic (that's 90% of the work, right there! I thought to myself) and popped down to Fry's Electronics and Radio Shack picking out parts. I put it all together on a breadboard (I had to read the wikipedia article on breadboards to figure out how to use it, I was so clueless), and, to my utter shock and amazement... it worked. Time to put it in a box!

The Beginner Project on this site helped me quite a bit with figuring out how to solder components together on a perfboard, and, after days and days and sheets and sheets of graph paper, I settled on a layout. I foolishly decided to add a mid scoop control on the soldered version of the effect without first breadboarding it... took me an hour to unsolder the damn thing when it didn't work, but otherwise I lucked out with a working circuit. I got a 3PDT switch from Aron's online store, and some various diodes and transistors to try out from him and Small Bear (I made little sockets for both so I could switch them out semi-easily). I ended up settling with the 1N914 diodes in their standard symmetric configuration that I had initially used, but wound up using a combination of 2N5089s, a 2N5133, and an MPSA13 for the transistors. I was surprised (and delighted) by how much they changed the sound of the circuit.

My enclosure was a standard 1590BB Hammond box. I carefully measured out where I wanted the holes to be drilled, but my drill bits slid all over the place anyway, making it look like a 3-year-old designed the layout. Oh well, it works--and I have a new hobby, now! Can't wait to start on another project.

No story is complete without a picture or two, so here. Doesn't look like much, though--when the holes in the box turned out all lopsided, I figured it'd be a waste to try to beautify it at all. Maybe next time.

http://moria.exopath.net/~harris/250_small.jpg
http://moria.exopath.net/~harris/254_small.jpg

The one problem I had was with the LED. The damn thing burnt out (I think). I used a red LED, put a 6.8k resistor on its positive lead, and hooked it up to the power. It worked for a while, but every time I turned the effect on, it would grow more and more orange until, one day, it just didn't turn on at all. Replaced it, and the same thing happened. Should I be using a bigger resistor?

Hope you enjoyed my story--I'm gonna play with my new box now.

Harris

[frequencycentral]

Hey well done, sounds like you learned a lot in a short time. The LED issue sounds like maybe the LED is a really low voltage one. Maybe you should explore LEDs at your supplier, you can go for a higher voltage LED and use a smaller resistor with it. Well done, your build look way better than my first one did. 

And welcome to THE forum!

[petemoore]

  My BMP's sounded bad, My FF's sounded good.
  That has now reversed.
  I think it's because I'm going back toward the larger cleaner amplifiers.
  When combined with the heavierly distorting amps, the BMP sounded...wretched, the FF sounded nice.
  The FF doesn't seem to have the low note 'density' with the big cleaner amps [part of this of course is because the dials also have changed positions], the BMP sounds more solid, and all around provides a smoother distortion tone, especially in the low frequency range.
  So...go figure again is the motto I supposed.
  This is a good case of a box and circuit that I've built up and destroyed a few times [cannabilization you see]. I thought this encarnation of BM would suffer the same inevatibility, a friend of mine, he said you'd better get that Big Muff [and the others I'd mentioned, TS, Dist+ which had been off the PB for some time] out and fire it up.
  Amazed I was, and out went the FF too, for what I'm doing with my main band, big clean is most of it...the BM works great with these settings...
  I've yet to de-house the Dist+ from this multi-thing I had going and try it with the 'new' amps.
  I went from 5e3's to 18watt Lite and a Blackface Beast thing I built that is the most powerful of my amps.