maestro rhythym and sound fuzz adaptation (in progress)

[pinkjimiphoton]

i missed one of these by THIS much on fleabay the other day, broken...so i had already accumulated the schem/svc manual, and noticed the fuzz section looked kinda intertesting:



so i figured what the hell, may as well vero it up.. the schem was so bad i couldn't tell if it was npn or pnp, so i made a layout for both. these haven't been built or messed with yet, so for now you're on your own. expect to play with the biasing spme, and notice the orientation of the transistors, the pinout ys e b c top to bottom!

if i get it to work i'll post back... if some brave soul wants to have a go, please let me know if it works!!

does anyone know what the original q's were, by chance?

anyways....pnp:



and npn :



have fun!!

advice/criticisms welcomed!!

[smallbearelec]

The circuit and the voltages correspond to an FZ-1A, so I would expect to select the transistors accordingly. See my notes on the Fuzz E-One if you have not already built something similar.

SD

[pinkjimiphoton]

awesome, thanks for the heads-up, steve!

[Strategy]

when I moved to Portland in the early 1990s it was maestro and mu-tron and crazy stuff like that everywhere I went. I still have Maestro "Rhythm King" drum machine. I never did get a Rhythm & Sound but played one

would love to see a FULL CLONE of this one day...guitar-controlled percussion sounds?!?

Strategy

[pinkjimiphoton]

dude, i almost got it... got sniped at the last second by 2.00. then we would have had one to disect and ressurect like the phase II.

suck!

[Strategy]

there are more of these out there!

I think people collect them as a novelty but you have to be pretty into experimental sounds to use the full range of options on Rhythm & Sound.

[pinkjimiphoton]

yah, they're out there... i know of a few locally, but peeps want way more than what they're worth. i mean, looking at the circuit,
it's actually relatively simple i think... just looks bad cuz it's a lot of parts!!

the percussion part is probably as easy as the fuzz, i mean, don't take many parts to make a drum synth... and easy enough to trigger i'd imagine. could probably trigger pretty much any drum pad by replacing the piezo transducer with a 1/4" jack.

might need a preamp... dunno.

gonna try and get enough motivation together to cobble the npb version of this together today. hard to get motivated lately.

[Strategy]

nobody will let you borrow one for the purpose of reverse engineering? 

[digi2t]

The Maestro USS-1 has been on my honey-do list forever.

I have the complete schematic, but I would love to get my hands on one to compare with.

[pinkjimiphoton]

dino,
i think my bud ed has an effect monger friend (the guy with the "mini phase II" supposedly)
and i believe this is one of the units he is supposed to have.
i gotta gig in mass not too far from him saturday, i will try and see if i can swing by and poke thru the guy's shit.

if he has one, it will be cheap. i too wanna reverse engineer this, but don't know if it's all that worthwhile.

a digi2t vero would be @#$%in' EPIC.


that said... dis ting here is cobbled together, popped the board over the course of the day, had to deal with some stuff, gonna go start stuffing transistors and see what happens...

wish me luck!!

[pinkjimiphoton]

wow, this ain't @#$%ing working out at all...wtf...

don't even try to build one of them veros...they are f'd up.

tried using the 3 diodes to drop the voltage down trick i used on the heathkit ta28, it's not working.

still reading 9v, it's worked perfect on the other things i've built... weird.

been reading and reading steve daniel's fuzz -e - one article as he suggested... almost the same circuit, for sure...
but i can't get it even close to the ballpark..

i quit .....................................












for now.

[digi2t]

dino,
i think my bud ed has an effect monger friend (the guy with the "mini phase II" supposedly)
and i believe this is one of the units he is supposed to have.
i gotta gig in mass not too far from him saturday, i will try and see if i can swing by and poke thru the guy's sh*t.

if he has one, it will be cheap. i too wanna reverse engineer this, but don't know if it's all that worthwhile.

a digi2t vero would be @#$%in' EPIC.


that said... dis ting here is cobbled together, popped the board over the course of the day, had to deal with some stuff, gonna go start stuffing transistors and see what happens...

wish me luck!!

Yeah, that would be epic indeed. Keep me posted brufski.

[pinkjimiphoton]

i have achieved fuzz, but man, this thing is as @#$%ed up as a soup sandwich bro!!



NOTHING about it makes any sense. at this point, it's running on 9v, with a 2n5401 in q1, another in q3...BACKWARDS...
and a ruskie mp15 in q2...also backwards...wtf!!!!!!!!!!

that said, it sounds pretty good. sounds kinda like an fz1, but not as much gain, and not as spluttery... more sustain.

no other combo of transistors seems to work. go figure. weird, weird, weird!!
i'll try and figure it out tomorrow... yikes...

[craigmillard]

hey guys, does anyone have the full schematic of this effect, not just the fuzz, wanna try the octave down as the bass effect sounds wicked:)

[pinkjimiphoton]

sure do... gimme a minute...

[pinkjimiphoton]

the veros above like i said are wrong, as i suspect the circuit as shown is wrong as well.
or maybe the brown acid kicked in, again, or something.

anyways.. i gotta draw the schematic, but this is an as-yet untested vero. it's been built, on the npn version above with the changes and additions shown here.. but this is a slightly easier layout, and i believe it to be accurate.
gonna draw up a schematic in a little bit.
there's some weird stuff going on in this circuit. but it sounds really good... can get overdrive, distortion, right up to fuzz with it.
and i included the transistors and the "hfe" readings (just from popping in my meter... these were the transistors i went with that to my ear sounded the best, so i just did the quick multimeter test)...also included the voltages i got for each transistor.
i think one of the transistors is backwards.(Q2)  seriously. i think it's being used as a diode or something, i don't quite understand what's going on, but if you put it in as shown normally on the schematic, it just doesn't really fuzz right. turn it backwards, and the circuit comes to life. the vero was built i think faithful to the schematic other than forgetting the ground - e connection on q1.

no guarantees this vero will be completely right til i match it up with the schematic (forthcoming)



oh yeah!!! make sure you don't let the metal cases of the transistors hit the case or ground... they get real hot real fast and sometimes don't recover... don't ask me how i learned this... 

[pinkjimiphoton]

ok, i know it's not much, but it's mine, and i do believe it sound fine, and i don't know what i did, so if i step on any toes while standing on the shoulders of giants,
forgive me, cuz it's an accident.

stupid pedal trick to come once i box it up.

[Mark Hammer]

hey guys, does anyone have the full schematic of this effect, not just the fuzz, wanna try the octave down as the bass effect sounds wicked:)

I seem to recall it was in the old Jack Darr amplifier repair book.  I'll have to check when I get home.

[Henry89789]

Pink Jimi:   

How you doing? You keep coming up with great projects. On vero, too. I got a supply of vero board and want to do more vero. This pedal would be a great way to use my leaky germaniums, too. I await your results. I am now planning and accumulating parts for my next seven pedals.

You tempt me to go walk the cow pastures to look for boletus growing on cow patties, but I'm to old for that stuff, now, and, all the cow pastures are full of condos .....

[pinkjimiphoton]

i miss them cow patty days, wandering around with big eyes and dirty feet...lol...

and a duffle or two of armchair voyaging. lol..

still playing with this one a little. i like things to sound good full blast, this sounds better a little less. will post video soon. peace!