if i wanted to make this substantially louder...

[pinkjimiphoton]

what would you do?



mess with r2 and r6 i figure would raise the gain if i dropped it maybe to say 10k for r2 and 1m for r6, but it doesn't need more gain.

it just needs more volume, it's pathetically weak stock.

also thinking maybe if i dropped r4 from 1m to a smaller value,like 100k or maybe 10k  it may make it loud enough to be useful.

or.... should i just pop out a couple pins of the 4049 and mod it so i use one more stage of the chip purely just for more volume?

sorry for the dumb questions, i really dig this pedal's tone, but it's about 6db below unity easily!!

[Mark Hammer]

You do realize that's an Anderton EPFM Tube Sound Fuzz, right?  And that it is only a few components away from being a Way Huge Red Llama, because of that?



I don't know why anyone would want to make it "substantially louder", because that beast is already plenty loud.  So maybe you've built it wrong.  I was never a big fan of the original circuit that you've shown, largely because the value of what you've shown as C1 and C2 is too small for the job.  Lets through far too much fizz.  The Llama values are better.

Myself, I like this even better.     Though given how many distortion/OD units you've made, I don't know that it will yield anything particularly differentiable from them.  It doesn't need the resonant booster.  A 2u2 to 10uf cap between A and B is perfectly fine.  Use whatever the hell you want for the op-amp in the front stage.  This circuit gets a warmer sound than what you've shown without sacrificing  volume.  You can also stick a SWTC control on the output of the Red Llama too.



P.S.: the e-mail address shown is no longer valid.

[pinkjimiphoton]

yeah mark, i figured it was obvious what it was.
i didn't build this... i made my own variant last year, "the boogie snake" with a 4069 instead of the 4049... i used just the one chip, i think i used 4 of the 6 stages, including one for a weird tone stack/phase canceller thing i hadn't seen before.

this pedal actually sounds great. it was something i picked up cheap on ebay, i am a sucker for pignoses if the price is right.

i figured i could hot rod it a little, cuz it's nowhere near as loud as any of the other variants i'd tried, and discovered they gooped it, probably in embarassment at such a stolen circuit.

it's just black spraypaint. some of which never set. nice touch, that.

so i don't wanna build one, i just wanna tweak the one i have.... it's cool cuzza what it is, but not a sound or pedal i need too have enough to build.

for building 90 some odd fuzzes, i'm really just a beginner at understanding this stuff.

so... with the idea of not building a new board to stuff in there... are there any mods that may be worth it to make this louder (i mean it's pathetically weak) or should i just hook up a third inverter stage?

i guess i was unclear as to what i was looking to do, sorry!!

[pinkjimiphoton]

i tried playing with this circuit some, replaced all the caps with good ones, and gained a LITTLE bit of volume.

thinking the 4049 might be hosed, and i don't have any.

tried wiring it up to use another inverter as another gain stage, but it just gave a weak farty distortion and some massive motorboating.

also tried replacing r4, thinking it may gain me some volume... tried between 100k and 10m, no real difference.

it's gotta be the damned chip. fark!!

[pinkjimiphoton]

ok. i tried 4 different 4049's in this thing, believe it or not the only one that worked was the nte4046, the phillips ones i got don't do anything but make freaky noises.
i checked the data sheets at my local jobber's, both were supposedly ube, which i'm assuming is what the little circle on the end of the triangle in the symbol for each stage is..

i replaced every gott-dang piece on the board... twice. 3x. 4. scraped the whole circuit clean of all the goo and sucked out the old solder and reflowed the whole god forsaken board. the thing SOUNDS great.

but it's just plain nowhere near loud enough.

is there a specific brand/manufacturer/part number that really matters? or should i bite the bullet and add another stage to the ass end?

mark said it should be loud, but it's not. it's easily 4-6db below unity gain when cranked.

the only parts i didn't swap out are the pots.

i DID notice if i shorted across the input and output of the 10k output pot it got a LOT louder, do you think it could be the pot?

this thing's really busting my stones way too much for such a simple circuit.

help/advice appreciated!!

[John Lyons]

If you shorted the wiper and the hot lug/3 of the pot and it got louder then yeah, the pot's the issue.
When the pot is full up the should be a short between those two lugs. I'd replace the pot and see what you get.

[pinkjimiphoton]

thanks john, i'll give it a shot. may have to order some proper size pots, i don't have anything close to these.
i bet that's it.

[pinkjimiphoton]

bingo!! thanks john, that solved it. plenty of volume now. i had to run jumpers to a 16mm (?) pot, the original was maybe half that size and soldered to the board.
cool! now for a couple replacement pigsnouts, and i've got a cool red lama in a pignose box.

just goes to show sometimes its the thing you least suspect!

onwards and upwards... happy new years man!

[MrStab]

i'm always really hesitant to blame faulty pots for problems, but it does happen. maybe "if all else fails, short your pot lugs" should be added to the debug guide.

[duck_arse]

@jimi - the triangle symbol in digital circuits generally means a buffer, non-inverting. the little circle appended to the triangle indicates the output is inverted. it sometimes appears on digital inputs to indicate the signal is inverted before further digital happenings further inside the device.

and the "a/ub/ube" is all the indication you'll get that the part is non-buffered. a buffered inverting buffer will have another stage added, looks a little like a power output stage, which prevents their linear operation.

[pinkjimiphoton]

@grant, +1 on that one. i've had it happen a few times, and it's making me suspect a few other builds i gave up on with similar behaviour.

i mean... how much current does it take to smoke a pot? i've watched a few pots and trimmers smoke, they usually still work even afterwards.

adding it to the trouble shooting guide just seems to make sense, short across the input and output of the pot, and if it gets a lot louder the pot is hosed or some weird taper maybe wired backwards.

@duck_arse, thanks for the explanation...i'd thought they meant buffered, not inverted cuz when i was looking at the data sheets (most of tht kinda info is still miles above me) i noticed the unbuffered 4049's didn't have that little circle on the end of the triangle, they were kinda like >  whereas the buffered ones (turned out the nte4058 works fine in this circuit, but the phillips doesn't... oscillates horribly but makes a cool but intermittently useless theremin if mess with it right) looked more like
>0

thanks guys. now to mod it a little so it sounds better.. imho it needs a little less hair and a little more back like mark said. 

[Mark Hammer]

Shave that hair by dropping the 1M feedback resistor in the second stage to something a little tamer, like 220k or 330k.  Increase the feedback cap value to retain a relatively low rolloff point - something in the vicinity of 3-4khz or less.  People report pleasing tone using a SWTC between the output and volume pot.

[kingswayguitar]

i'm always really hesitant to blame faulty pots for problems, but it does happen. maybe "if all else fails, short your pot lugs" should be added to the debug guide.

thanks
gonna try that in a distortion box i've been debugging since the 10 yr contest - lol!
probes ok but just wont hit the amp

[pinkjimiphoton]

Shave that hair by dropping the 1M feedback resistor in the second stage to something a little tamer, like 220k or 330k.  Increase the feedback cap value to retain a relatively low rolloff point - something in the vicinity of 3-4khz or less.  People report pleasing tone using a SWTC between the output and volume pot.

awesome, thanks mark.
i'm not gonna add a tone control, cuz...well... it ain't worth drilling the hole.

i DID however drop that resistor to 220k (has to be an accident, no great mind here) and i dig it. chilled it back and warmed it up. also liked a .22 coupling cap to stage 2, and changed the input resistor to 68k with a 1m pulldown. very nice now!!

toying with the little cap there some. i kinda like the sparkle stock, but it can be a little glassy with some. sounds GREAT with an sg with a humbucker.

pretty fuzzbox friendly, too.

i tried miss kay (the kay amp box) and my tonebender thru it, and it was a pretty magical combo... lots of sustain, plenty of cream and not muddy when the guitar is dimed like my fuzzface. and it cleans up nice together.

time to build another one in a teensy-weensy box

with radio shack going under, i have to source more weird metal boxes... i'm likeing the velleman ones, they're about half the size of a radio shack, taller than a hammond but not as long/wide... i mean most of the stuff i build is on boards maybe an inch square. i could really overpop my pedalboard a lot more with smaller boxes..
hard to stuff a battery in tho. but i've been thinking about trying a couple lithuim cells instead...