KAY UNIVOX EFFECTOR FUZZ

[nickmaynard]

Hey everyone,

Just bought a Kay Univox Effector, a really neat guitar with a bunch of built in effects.



The Echo/Wah/Tremolo/Whirlwind are actually all variations on the same thing and are only kind of neat sometimes. HOWEVER, the fuzz circuit sounds kind of awesome! I did some Googling and found this diagram -



The Fuzz circuit is in the lower right. A friend of mine was playing this guitar and really enjoying it so I want to build the fuzz circuit into its own pedal as a gift.

Here's my question. It looks like a pretty simple op amp fuzz but I want to know if anyone knows what the closest chip to a MC1445P would be since I wasn't able to find those online. Any help would be greatly appreciated. I'll post full detailed notes and pictures of the completed build if I can figure out what chip to use!

Some more internal pics here - http://inspireformation.blogspot.com/2012/09/the-kay-effector-onboard-effects-madness.html

[armdnrdy]

When I google MC1445 I come up with a DIL14 IC - GATE CONTROLLED TWO CHANNEL INPUT WIDEBAND AMPLIFIER.
http://pdf1.alldatasheet.net/datasheet-pdf/view/122740/MOTOROLA/MC1445.html

The IC depicted in the overlay is a DIL8.
Maybe it's a MC1458P which is a dual op amp. (equivalent to two 741s)

[nocentelli]

Seems to be clippers to ground before the opamp input. Is the guitar signal driven by another opamp before it hits the fuzz DPDT switch?

[dwmorrin]

+1 to it being a 1458.  Looking at the connection, any standard dual op amp should do the trick.
Why don't you open up yours, peek inside and see what's written on the chip?

Nocentelli, I think it goes through both sides of the IC before the diodes.

[digi2t]

This is what I see...



I think the other half is being used as an output amp for the effects sections.

[nocentelli]

It's (nearly) Jimi's Stupid Simple overdrive!

[digi2t]

It's (nearly) Jimi's Stupid Simple overdrive!

Life is a wheel my friend.

[pinkjimiphoton]

lol!!! wow, it is almost the same as what i came up with... just different values. how cool is that?

[SpencerPedals]

My brother was going through some junk the other day and found one of these gems, which he saved for me.  He knows I build effects and rebuild old and strange guitars, and so this was such a cool find.  It works, technically.  A few broken tuners, a plastic screw inserted for a missing saddle, the battery had exploded and one of the terminals was stuck in the battery snap, and years of heavy gunk.  Most settings worked, but the pots were all scratchy or iffy, a few switches were the same, and so she'll need some reworking.  I need another project like I need another hole in my head but this thing is just damned cool sounding, even half-working.  Forgot to take a "before pic" but you can see a partial pic of the progress.

[bluesdevil]

I remember seeing these in the Sears catalog (Christmas edition?) back in the seventies when I was a kid and always wanted one..... good luck with the restoration!!
I hope to come across one myself one day.

[cool arrow]

Hey everyone,

Just bought a Kay Univox Effector, a really neat guitar with a bunch of built in effects.



The Echo/Wah/Tremolo/Whirlwind are actually all variations on the same thing and are only kind of neat sometimes. HOWEVER, the fuzz circuit sounds kind of awesome! I did some Googling and found this diagram -



Wow!!! Nice score. Back in the days of my youth , I had this exact same model which I got brand new. I've regretted getting rid of it because it was my first guitar. Hopefully I can come across another one for ole times sake.

The Fuzz circuit is in the lower right. A friend of mine was playing this guitar and really enjoying it so I want to build the fuzz circuit into its own pedal as a gift.

Here's my question. It looks like a pretty simple op amp fuzz but I want to know if anyone knows what the closest chip to a MC1445P would be since I wasn't able to find those online. Any help would be greatly appreciated. I'll post full detailed notes and pictures of the completed build if I can figure out what chip to use!

Some more internal pics here - http://inspireformation.blogspot.com/2012/09/the-kay-effector-onboard-effects-madness.html

[SpencerPedals]

Zombie threading here, but for the sake of having a good amount of info in one spot for this guitar, I snipped the leads on the bridge pickup on this tonight to measure the pickup resistance.  Suspiciously low (5.69K) for a humbucker, leading me to believe it was likely a single coil masquerading as a humbucker.  I pulled the cover off (just glued to the brass baseplate, not soldered) and sure enough:



One coil.  This isn't shocking news for knock-offs of this era, but I figured it was worth posting for the sake of people interested in these things.

[pinkjimiphoton]

yeah, totally typical. a lot of so called "humbuckers" weren't...

i gotta univox badazz recently, supposedly with mini buckers. one was dead, so i opened it up. what they called humbucking is a well shielded single coil with magnets on either side.

the kinda pickup in this was typical in memphis, conquerer, gilbert and countless other budget jap guitars. surprisingly, some of 'em sound KILLER when ya roll enough treble off to stop the squealing.

[SpencerPedals]

Yeah I remember thinking these things sounded pretty damned bright for humbuckers when I had plugged it in, but it wasn't exactly lacking in electrical issues at the time so I had to check it out. 

Just measured the neck at 5.71K.  Clearly no adjustment in number of winds to compensate for bridge vs. neck.  My single coil needs are met already by my Tele and a couple of vintage Japanese guitars, so it looks like I'll be winding up some humbuckers for this beater.

[pinkjimiphoton]

steve,
try 'em first. they WILL be microphonic (trust me) but if ya roll the tone knobs down, they get a @#$%in' seriously phat tone like a cross between a bucker and a p90. you may find they actually sound pretty good.

i've left them on a few guitars. some of 'em sound most excellent. you may be surprised... don't fall for the BUM (blind urge to mod) until ya play with 'em a bit.

also VERY fuzz friendly... but only if ya roll the tone control back or pot 'em. tone control is easier.

[pinkjimiphoton]

for all intents, they are basically the same pickups as the teisco gold foil "cooder" pickups. even made by the same peeps, most likely.
trust me on this one.. play it with a band a little. you may be pleasantly surprised.

[Mark Hammer]

There were many pickups of similar general concept.  And the concept is a single coil, with a conduction of the magnetic field out to the side and up.  The sensing area, where the field gets disturbed by the string, is now the top of the coil and some point just off to the side.  I have a disassembled gold foil on my shelf, and the coil sits around a vertically-oriented magnet, affixed to a soft iron base that is bent up at one side.  The bent-up side has threaded holes, into which "adjustable polepieces" (screws and nothing more) were inserted.  From outside, it looks like a dual-coil pickup until you realize that the adjustable screws are so close to one side that there's no way there could be a coil under there.



The Epiphone New Yorker pickups were pretty much the same.  People talk about them as if they were mini-humbuckers, but underneath they are essentially the same idea, although prettier (gold plate and real ivory mounting surround).  I used to have one on an Epi Windsor that was stolen from me, nearly 30 years back.  I disassembled it, reassembled it, and gave it to Mark Knopfler (although I don't know if he ever did anything with it).



The shifting of the sensing area, so that it is horizontally, rather than vertically oriented, makes it behave more like a humbucker than a Strat type.  The P90 operates on a similar principal.  It is a "meatier" sound, with a lot of bark.

[pinkjimiphoton]

yessir, mark is 100% on the money as always!!

they DO sometimes hum less.. but they aren't humbuckers. in some cases, they are out of phase, so if ya open up carefully you can reverse the wires inside the pickup.. or convert it to a three wire dealio, with hot ground and shield. then you can add a phase switch and get some quite beefy humbucker tones in the middle position.

a lot of the later japanese guitars were intentionally set up out of phase, so in the middle position you had a cleaner quieter output, and could flick the switch up or down for solo work. and in the middle, you could adjust one pickup up or down in volume and mess with the phasing and tone.

mod 'em so one tone control is a low pass filter, and the other a hi pass and you suddenly have a ridiculously versatile guitar where you can dial in the amount of gain right from your axe... more bass = more distortion. great trick, i do it to almost all my 3 or 4 knob guitars now. it's on joe gore's tonefiend site if anyone is interested, look for ptb or something like that.

on les pauls it's great... less bass lets ya ape rick and tele like tones, control how much drive a fuzz will have and let ya dial in a nice "pocket" for when you're singing or comping in an ensemble situation.

some will scream heresy, but when mixing, ya generally need to roll off the low end some anyways with guitars to make room for the rest of the stuff... especially the moneymaker, usually vocals.

all that said, if ya hate the pickups, throw 'em on ebay. some folks really seem to love them.,

[SpencerPedals]

I may have accidentally given the impression that I was trashing the old pickups—not the case at all, but they're just not staying in this guitar.  This guitar is to become my designated drop-tuned guitar (I don't play heavy stuff often, but when I want to, I need one set up for it) and so the single coils just won't work here.  I was given an old Kay archtop that had a crazy skinny neck and was in hard shape that I still have the single coil pickups from, and so these may get paired with those single coils in the future somehow.  I agree that those old Japanese single coils have a lot of character.  They totally missed the mark they were shooting for and hit a very different, but still great, mark.  Personally, I prefer them over any strat-style single coil.  I have an Aria Diamond has a big single coil in it that is very P-90-esque and has this great pop to it and a Sekova semi-hollow with two single coils that are very clear and chimey.  Anyhow, I have this big piece of red 1950's lacquered linen (formica?) that is going to be a future guitar top and I think a varied assortment of scavenged Kay pickups would work quite nicely in that, both aesthetically and sonically. 

[Bear]

That was my first electric, bought used in maybe the late 80s still.  The effects electronics were fun for the month or so they still worked.  The pickups were just like the ones above.  Laminated arched top floated above a cement heavy solid body (probably laminated).  Hardware included chromed plastic pieces.  Played and sounded like crap.  Don't miss it, but the effects were fun while they lasted.