**The DIYStompboxes 10-Year Anniversary Contest Thread**

[pinkjimiphoton]

hey my friends,
i just wanted to hip you to a quick revision on the juergulator. i finally have a couple days off to mess with the circuit some.
i think i've improved on it... all the same sounds are in it, but it gets a bit more now.
here's the deets... swap out the 50k harmonics pot for a 10k... now the harmonics pot will be more useful, instead of all bunched up near the top, and you'll gain a little more balls. also, it lowers the input impedance significantly and makes the juerg way more friendly to guitar knob tweaking, like a fuzzface.
next up, take the "tweak" (or as i call it now, the "focus") pot and bump it up from 500k to 1 meg. you can go to TWO megs if you want to probably. this will make it much more obvious... almost like a tone or attack control... still subtle, but definitely more noticeable.
you can also try raising the percolate value to 250 or 500k most likely, tho i haven't tried yet.
this one i just finished is built to miro's excellent layout on tagboardeffects.
miro, i can't thank you enough.. really really groovy layout!!
i guess this makes it juergulator rev. 1 if you make the changes.
all pots linear
again, pnp ge russian mn25b, this one's hfe is 62
and a bc547, this time an hfe of 580.
i think we can call it done.
rock on, my brothers and sisters of diy
talk soon
peace
pink jimi photon


edit: in the interest of conceptual continuity, more deets here:

http://www.diystompboxes.com/smfforum/index.php?topic=104404.0

[Vallhagen]

Great info, Jimi. I am about to build mine, but maybe shall hold my horses following further development... Well i wont build it this week anyway:) ...

I follow your link.

Cheerio

[pinkjimiphoton]

hey bengt, the beauty is you can build it and swap the pots out.

i think you'll be impressed. it really seems to bring the perc to life... i had one guy take it last nite to try today,
and another one who hasn't even tried it, he wants to buy it just from hearing it.

that almost never happens with my pedal, lol... maybe the suzy-q, but that's about it.

[Vallhagen]

Just got the PRIZE PACK! ... which means I have enuff to play with for ... a year ahead or so. Maybe I should slam them all in one giant "fx'o'Patton-böx".

Again... Thank you all for a great competition! Great fun!

[garcho]

Maybe I should slam them all in one giant "fx'o'Patton-böx"

Yes! DIY rack?

[Liquitone]

Congrats bengt. That sure looks like a lot of fun!

[Ice-9]

Just got the PRIZE PACK! ... which means I have enuff to play with for ... a year ahead or so. Maybe I should slam them all in one giant "fx'o'Patton-böx".

Again... Thank you all for a great competition! Great fun!

Mmmmmmm, that lot looks delicious

[LucifersTrip]

Btw, I also want to thank Small Bear for, in addition to my prize, offering to throw in a bare box for free if I build something in it.  I'll definitely do something atypical and post pics...

[Liquitone]

This morning the Hammer/Pickdropper/Midwayfair FY-2 I chose as a reward arrived in the mail! It looks really beautiful. It sounds really nasty, I love it!! 
Thanks Mark, Dave and Jon for building this thing! It will receive a place of honour on my future pedalboard, and I will step on it every time the audience dozes off during ambient songs.
Here are the pictures;




I've only had a day to play around with it, so I still have to figure out what these 'mode' and 'body' switches do, but I like how you can adjust the mid-range with the 'shift' knob.
Here's a little demo I made this afternoon, it's; Squier strat into germanium treblebooster into FY-2 into Plexi-Drive into a plexi style amp;

Cheers, Kay/Liquitone

[garcho]

^Gorgeous!

[Jdansti]

+1

[pickdropper]

Hey, that's the first time I've seen it out together.

Congrats Kay, it was well deserved.  Your build was fantastic.

[pickdropper]

Er, I meant to type "put together."  I can't edit my post for some reason.

[deadastronaut]

beauty...

love the design pick..

[Mark Hammer]

Hey, nice.

That's my first peek at it too.  Has a little of that steam-punk thing going on.  My deep gratitude to Dave and Jon for taking what was a little hunk of perfboard with a bunch of pots and switches hanging off it, and turning it into something that feels and looks like a prize.  I feel like the person who sits in the corner, drinking beer, telling the movers to put the sofa over there, and the wall unit over there, then has the audacity to whine to their friends about how how hard moving is.

The innards (and outtards).....

The "Body" switch either lifts the cap that runs in parallel with the 100k resistor from V+, or selects one of two alternate values.  The net effect of adding one of the caps is to "thin out" the tone.

The "Mode" switch selects either a lowpass filtered sound (middle position), the stock midscoop (side position 1), or a no scoop full-bandwidth sound (other side position).  The middle position tends to be kind of dull and woofy, unless the fuzz is turned way up.  It is not especially useful, except for maybe bass, but it was a freebie that came with a 3-position switch, so I left it in.

The Shift control varies where the lowpass filtering rolls off.  This has different consequences, depending on the mode you've set it to.  In the middle Mode position, it varies how much of the lower mids are added in.  In the midscoop position, it varies the width and focus of the scoop.  In the full bandwidth position, it essentially varies how much bass is added in.  It's pretty simple, really.  The stock unit has a 10k and 15k resistor in series, with a cap going from their junction to ground.  I just replaced some of that resistance with a pot, stuck suitable fixed resistors on each end of the pot to get 25k total, and ran the cap from the wiper of the pot to ground.  The hard part was a little bit of math to figure out what the "outside" resistances needed to be to nail the right range.  Most of this is documented in various posts I've made about the FY-2.

You'll find a trimpot on the board.  I felt the transistor I used for Q1 had too much gain, so I added the trimpot to add some resistance between emitter and ground, and turn it down.  I tried to set it so that there was a reasonable large enough contrast between min and max fuzz settings, although one is entirely free to adjust it from where it is presently set without anything getting screwed up.  I didn't feel it was the sort of thing whose frequency of tweaking meritted making it a panel control; K.I.S.S. principle and all.

The thing I love about the circuit is that it doesn't take very much at all to deliver a much broader palette of sounds to work with.  Nice to hear it exploited with some of that 60's psychedelic finger vibrato, the way nature intended it to be used.  And, as your video illustrates, pushing it a little with any sort of booster can easily get you into imploding-pedal territory. 

Congrats again, and thanks for the video.

[Liquitone]

Thanks for the explanation Mark! It's nice to know what the switches and shift knob actually do from a technical point of view, it helps getting a grip of these very interactive functions.
In the video I mostly used the setting as seen in the pictures, with the mode on 3 and body in the middle, and turned the fuzz to max at some point.
I remember the guitar player in my first few bands had the Avora branded FY-2 and he always struggled with the mids and volume, this thing really solves that problem and I can imagine it working well with all sort of guitars and amps.
Another thing I like about it is how it sounds like a filter opening up after the initial attack, that really gives the pedal something special about it and sets it apart from the octave fuzz.

I did adjust the trimpot inside (by ear, so not sure if I turned it up or down from your setting). When I first tried it out the notes sort of crumbled away during the sustain or with soft picking, more than I would want from a gated fuzz, but now, though still gated, the notes are firmer and clearer. (if that all makes sense, it's hard describing these things in a non-native language)
In the last couple of years I've grown accustomed to always using a germanium device at the front, when I take that away I always feel I am missing that glassy, harmonic sparkle.
So I'm glad the FY-2 work well with that setup, that way I don't need to tap-dance between pedals when using it. I use my octave fuzz the same way, with the guitars volume backed off it sounds somewhat like it would without a germanium booster in front of it, and when I max the volume I can get into that imploding-pedals territory you described. With the octave fuzz as well as with this FY-2 I love how it freaks out when you hit more than one note at a time.

Thanks again for building this Mark, and giving me some new sonic territory to explore.

Cheers, Kay

[kingswayguitar]

I love how it freaks out when you hit more than one note at a time.

Cheers, Kay

The Joy of Fuzz my friend, The Joy of Fuzz!!

[NKLArg]

ok, here's my entry, its taken a while to design (too bloody long) and get the switching right with a little help from Ian (slacker) cheers man.  

oh and a little help from mrs astronauts ideas on the etch design..... ()trying to muscle in on it..)

introducing:

The ''SPACE PATROL FUZZ''

as you can see its basically a classic big muff with fat/thin switching, plus 3 other modes for synthy, buzzy, octavey, duck and swell type sounds..by switching diodes and collector resistors. (which was a pita to work out)
rather  like a bias control on a fuzz face...but for both collectors.


schematic:


pdf's:  layout + pcb.
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/7464107/SPACEPATROLFUZZLAYOUT.pdf

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/7464107/SPACEPATROLFUZZPCB.pdf

guts...the wiring was a lot neater, but i had to pull out the pcb and remake it, and had limited tinker time to get t finished on time..



video demo...dry then with effects..

enjoy...





p.s pedal backdrop coutersy of Mrs Astronauts dress....shhhhh...

Wich transistors and diodes do you use for Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 and D1 D2 D3 and D4? PLEASE!! im from argentina and i want to build this one. Cheers!
Nicolas Ayastuy aka NKLArg

[deadastronaut]

Cool, i used 5088's..but 3904' were just as good..

and 1n4148's...however IIRC  i had bat85's in Q2....socket the diodes and try them out and see which gives the best octave sounds when in modes 3/4...
have fun ...

[Govmnt_Lacky]

Just checking back to see if the "Competition Crossover" prize was ever sent out to Urs??

*** NOT TRYING TO START ANY CONFLICTS. JUST ASKING!***