hey pink? what's for dinner?

[deafbutpicky]

I might manage to put it in LTspice for you tomorrow, just as curious as you are;)

[pinkjimiphoton]

i knew i'd screw SOMETHING up....

on the vero, r1 and r2, the voltage divider feeding vb to pin 3 of the 5534 should be 100K, NOT 10K!!!

the vero is populated. it's cute. as veros go.

gonna wire it up and put some electrons to it shortly... with a little luck, it'll work. not holding my breath. 

here's a corrected vero



this is what i'm working on right now with it...







perf by rutabaga bob:

[pinkjimiphoton]

tone 1 and 3 need to be reversed on the vero,

but it is now VERIFIED... fired up first shot, sounds exactly like the one on my breadboard!!
will try some other more common pnp's to see if they fly... stay tuned.

i hope somebody tries this thing out... it has MONSTROUS big balls i can't show in any video!! lol

[pinkjimiphoton]

ok... the transistor? has to be germanium, so leakage is definitely coming into play.

it doesn't care if the transistor is pnp or npn. or what the gain is... i tried it with gains from 18 to 246hfe... some sounded better than others.
i tended to like a gain around 90 best with humbuckers. but i would imagine whatever ya got will work, as long as it's ge... hissy,, noisy, p.o.s. germaniums with lousy gain RULE here...

also.. output cap. with a strat, .47 is great. little wooly with humbuckers on my 335. also, doesn't clean up quite the same with buckers, sounds pretty much like you'd expect it to.

if you play a strat and a les paul, say, i'd add a switch. use a .1 on one side for a les paul, and a .47 on the other for a strat and the ass is about equal that way. tie the free ends of the cap together to the node with the 1n34's, and the other ends to two poles of a spdt switch. then you can flick a switch to change guitars if ya wanna.

anyways... whatever ya do... have fun.

btw... i have a feeling this thing will work well with bass, too... gonna try my fretless thru it tomorrow and see what it does.

[Mustachio]

Jimi , I been in bed sick was gonna ask yesterday. Have you tried this boxed up yet ? You mentioned that there's voltage coming in on the gain pot shaft. I'm wondering if this is going to ground out with the enclosure.

As soon as I can see straight I plan on tossing this on the ol bread board , sounded great in the video man!

[pinkjimiphoton]

nah, it should be fine... it's only on the shaft part. i'm getting no ac/dc or current leakage i can find with my meter... i think it's just cuz the top of the gain pot connects directly to the b of the q.

i haven't boxed yet, had to wait for the logo i stuck on the box to dry on... lol.. liquid nails, baby... stick ANYTHING to ANYTHING!!

lol

hang on, i'll check and see if it grounds... i'll jump it to ground... brb

sweet... good news!! nope, doesn't ground it out.. loses the proximity thing when it's grounded, too, and a "hum" that was bugging me.

i believe it's good to go!!

[tommycataus]

Dude this looks awesome, you're always full of great ideas. Time to order in the ge pnps me thinks!!

[pinkjimiphoton]

just don't waste a  lot of money on good ge's tom, the one in there at the moment is like, 18hfe or something... it's more diode than transistor i think,  still waiting on someone smarter than me to figure out wtf i did.

[digi2t]

Flying Spaghetti Monster Fuzz?? Sounds like a yummy dish.

How about some "Flying Japanese Noodles Monster Guitar Synth" as the side?



(That was my breadboard test of the "Japanese Guitar Synth" schematic, last year.)

Nice work bro! That germ in the feedback loop is a twist. Just for shits and grins, are you going to try Jon's suggestion of JFET's or MOSFET's?

[deafbutpicky]

Hey Jim,
tried it in LTspice tonight and couldn't get any reasonable results from it. I guess some decent
ge transistor model is crucial even for a simple sim.
Anyway, I still think it's a trade off effect between part of the signal getting grounded through
the 1µ, raising the gain, and lowering Vf by paralleling b-c and b-e junctions (frequency
selective for the signal part going through b-e because of the cap and Rs in front of it)
adding distortion to the signal. Have to try it myself, when I've finished my recent Kronos project/built.

You should rename it the enigma drive...

[italianguy63]

Yeah-- The Pink Enigma...  that has some serious connotations. 

[pinkjimiphoton]

Yeah-- The Pink Enigma...  that has some serious connotations. 

i was married to her for 17 years...lol

dino... looks fun!! gonna have a play with some pll's soon i think. i love the way your mind works, my brother!!! lol

i tried silicon transistors in it, and a 2n7000 and vn2222, did not work. has to be germanium. low gain, high gain, doesn't seem to matter, but definitely affects the tone. i'm thinking it's just a power-filtered breaking down diode sound or something, but man, it sounds good!!

[pinkjimiphoton]

boxed. screaming... no more hum or crackles like on the breadboard.

gave it two violet leds for "eyes".  i went and got lazy, no mods to the original circuit. maybe next one.

[pinkjimiphoton]

ok, so i added another simple gain stage to it to give it some more balls. tried a bunch of crap on the breadboard,
and finally settled on this... for all intents, it's the final stage of a big muff... i used a 5088, but any npn should do.

i tried it without the input cap.. didn't work well. since caps in series divide, i figured using a 1u input on the extra stage would drop the overall output capacitance.. which i guess it did. made for a bit tighter tone.

tried a couple resistor values for the resistor on the input, 15k seemed to work best, so went with it.
for the voltage divider i actually used 430k top and 105k bottom just cuz the odd value was convenient.
went with a 2.2k e resistor, cuz it seemed to have the best gain and tone for the rest of the circuit... below 2.2k, it was too grainy, above, started to get kinda muddy to my ear.

it was now loud as hell, so i added a 10k resistor before the output cap.. this seemed to also focus the tone a little more. also added a little filtering. i figured since i didn't wanna change the tone coming out, i'd go with the same size cap as the input... seemed to work well, so .1u it was, seemed good. added a 4.7m to ground at the end of the output cap cuz this is on a daughterboard and i don't want "pops". seemed to do the trick. may be overkill.

also added a second 100u filter cap for the extra stage... i figured that would help with noise, and also decouple the two stages from the power supply.. nice, quiet, and solid.

on batteries, it is now really cool and squishy on dieing batts... and real tite and focused on a wart at a higher voltage. i won't be happy til i gig it next week, but im happy with the tone and response... it still cleans up nice, but doesn't need as much gain to get a good solid classic rock guitar tone.... i find the gain about 10:00 is PLENTY... above that it becomes a distortion and eventually a somewhat gated fuzz/buzztone. should be plenty of gain for even weak pickups now. tried it with my maple neck black strat and my blonde 335 copy  both... could get virtually the same tones with either guitar, and now unity gain is maybe 9:00 instead of 2 pm.  

anyways... simple little stage. just add it on between the output of the board, and the input of the volume control. it's not necessary, but i found it better to have way more firepower than you need and a volume control than not quite enough balls to cut thru the mix.

i want people's @#$%in' hair to part at the back of the hall when i kick this puppy on. i think that won't be an issue anymore.

heres a pcb/schematic of the add on:



here's a vero add on board:



so if you're messing with this, ya may wanna consider adding on this to the project. i didn't think it was gonna be necessary, and if this is the only pedal you're using it's probably fine... but this way it has enough drive to kick some ass instead of making ya wish it had enough jam.

anyways... onwards and upwards, peeps... peace out

[Mustachio]

Awesome Jimi! I bet this extra stage is huge! Gonna have to try it out.

In the pcb version you posted here R3 looks like its only connected to ground and not the collector as in the vero. And R4 looks like connected to the collector instead of the base like in the vero. I'm just guessing the vero is correct ?

I might be wrong let me look at the final stage of a bmp again.

Still awesome dood cool ideas from you as always!

I need to buy a few more breadboards the two I have now are all full with current tinkerings.

[pinkjimiphoton]

thanks jim for the kind words...
you're right, the vero is right.. i made a mistake on the pcb... not used to doing those.

updated really shitty schematic...



here's the fixed pcb thing



it is WAY huge bro... it's neat, its different from every other fuzz i've built tonally... kinda like a big muff that cleans up like a fuzzface.
i'm digging it more the more i play with it.

i may try and work up an adapatation with a dual opamp instead, just to make it really stupid easy.

the ge clipper in the feedback loop sounds REALLY cool... it breaks up differently from ge or silicon or chips usually do... it's gotta certain "chime" to it you usually only hear in marshalls or voxes.

i hope ya diggit when you build it.

and believe me, there's more projects coming... i can't build 'em as fast as i seem to cobble them together. i'm at least 10 boxes behind, and that's not counting the audio effects fuzzound project me jrod and CRRR reverse engineered... and spawned at least 5 different fuzzes from on the way to discovering that it's the same circuit as the kimberly buzz box... which we also have in that project. yikes... lol

onward and upward!

[digi2t]

on batteries, it is now really cool and squishy on dieing batts... and real tite and focused on a wart at a higher voltage.

Sounds like a prime candidate for a voltage control pot to me. Like the Skyripper. Dial that baby right in.

[pinkjimiphoton]

on batteries, it is now really cool and squishy on dieing batts... and real tite and focused on a wart at a higher voltage.

Sounds like a prime candidate for a voltage control pot to me. Like the Skyripper. Dial that baby right in.

for some peeps, that would be perfect. them ne55xx chips can sound real sweet when driven hard with a bad power supply!!

[pinkjimiphoton]

dangit, noticed i drew the added npn as a pnp...

fixed.

[pinkjimiphoton]

ok, revised it a little.

changed the clipper, so the b+ is switched to the emitter instead of hardwired. had to add a switch , a 2.2u cap and a 4.7m resistor (on the switch to ground) for pop control.

also added a switch to lift the ground of the ge diodes. this makes for a bit less rude of a pedal

but with them on, you can get some very funky sounds.

anyways, footswitchable feedback clipper added, ground lift for the hard clipper at the tail end, changed the .47u output cap before the last stage to .1, lost some of the wooliness.

now with the soft clipper switch off, you get a nice overdrive up to fuzz. kick it on, and get a huge boost in gain, distortion, and brilliance. it's pretty cool.

anyways... i just added a track cut to the vero i built between the 10k and the e of q1 and flew a couple wires to the switch.

flying spaghetti monster, indeed... it's getting messier in there.

also, when the switch is on for the boost, it makes it sustain like a sumbitch and on some notes "bloom" into octave up feedback.

it does the octave up thing too, with the boost on and the gain cranked.

i don't find i need the gain above about 10:00, above that, it gets to be too much overkill for me.

the switch is actually labeled "overkill"... the circuit snippet is "the bloom n' boost" circuit (the ge transistor as a clipper in the op amp feedback loop and the associated support passives...which i believe is an original idea, completely by accident)

here ya go, sorry, too damn lazy to update the vero right now