68 tele with a 1-off mystery fuzz circuit!

[ghostsauce]

Oh my... what a beauty. This is my dad's guitar that he bought and modified in the early 70's as a student at Berklee, on a seriously tight budget.

http://ghostsauce.net/random/pics/DadsTele-01.jpg
http://ghostsauce.net/random/pics/DadsTele-02.jpg
http://ghostsauce.net/random/pics/DadsTele-03.jpg
http://ghostsauce.net/random/pics/DadsTele-04.jpg
http://ghostsauce.net/random/pics/DadsTele-05.jpg
http://ghostsauce.net/random/pics/DadsTele-06.jpg
http://ghostsauce.net/random/pics/DadsTele-07.jpg
http://ghostsauce.net/random/pics/DadsTele-08.jpg
http://ghostsauce.net/random/pics/DadsTele-09.jpg

He put a Dimarzio super distortion in the bridge, a humbucker from an old Gibson les paul in the neck, and got another student to design a circuit that could make the sound in his head, and then he installed that into the guitar. And oh man, it's a good sound: http://ghostsauce.net/random/Dad's%2068%20FrankenTele.m4a

It's buzzy right now, I've got to give it fresh wires. In that clip I'm using the guitar into a Marshall Class 5, set crunchy. You'll hear the bridge pickup, then neck, then bridge + fuzz. The fuzz just swamps the amp's V1 in a beautiful way. I'm gonna trace out the fuzz circuit after all is said and done, but for now it's just a mystery to me. Any ideas what it could have been derived from?

[Mark Hammer]

Berklee or Berkeley?

[ghostsauce]

Berklee college of music, Boston: http://www.berklee.edu/

Unless there's two in Boston.. idk

[Mark Hammer]

Familiar with it.  Just wasn't sure if you were specifying the school you thought you were.  Besides, you gotta admit, that IS the sort of guitar someone attending Berkeley in 1970 would have been playing.

[amptramp]

I was wondering if you had managed to get Norman Greenbaum's Telecaster that had been modified with an on-board fuzz as used in "Spirit in the Sky".  He eventually sold it but never knew what the circuit was that had been added in it, so it remains a mystery today.

[ghostsauce]

Hah, neat. No, definitely not the same one though. The guitar was stock when dad got it, and with the money he had he turned it into the guitar he wanted. Dad and the guy who built the fuzz sat down and turned the circuit into the tone in dad's head. Just thought it'd be cool to figure out what it used to be and how far away it landed.

I may build one up in stompbox form sometime

[aron]

Now listen. First of all I CONCUR that I almost did the same things to my TELE in the effort to make it better! OTOH, is there only one transistor there? If so, wouldn't that be a boost? I don't see diodes there at all.
Super Distortion? Your father has good taste! :-)

[R.G.]

Looks like maybe 10 minutes of work to trace out the circuit.

Got good, clear photos of top and bottom sides?

[slacker]

That's the coolest Tele I've ever seen. What the hell do all those switches even do?

[ghostsauce]

The stuff on the front are for different phase options, fuzz/boost on-off, battery on/off, tone knob for the fuzz/boost. There is one switch that needs replacing, and I think it is a coil split.

Idk, it's gotta be doing more than just boosting it... it gets this fuzzy clipping thing going on that I can't get out of my amp with a boost, and I've tried a lot through my class 5. And I can get it to do that with the amp clean.. Sounds like nothing I've ever heard. I'll be taking it apart and putting fresh wires throughout, and I'll trace it out then.

[ghostsauce]

Took another clip - http://ghostsauce.net/random/Dad's%2068%20FrankenTele%202.m4a

Should've tuned.. in a rush for work. Bridge pickup used throughout. First the amp's setup very clean, played a few bars without the boost/fuzz engaged, then kicked it in. Definitely not a clean boost. Then I set the amp up dirty and did without/with once more.

[Mark Hammer]

That low-end "flatulence" is nice.  Seriously.

[tca]

That low-end "flatulence" is nice.  Seriously.

... almost like a mosfet!

[Gus]

To add a little to R.G.s post. 
Post a picture of the trace side of the PCB.  Someone could trace it from that with a good top and bottom side picture and part values. 
#8 is a good start

[Jdansti]

That low-end "flatulence" is nice.  Seriously.

+1!

I was wondering if you had managed to get Norman Greenbaum's Telecaster that had been modified with an on-board fuzz as used in "Spirit in the Sky".  He eventually sold it but never knew what the circuit was that had been added in it, so it remains a mystery today.

A little off topic, but Tim D made a simple 386 based fuzz that emulated N.G.'s fuzz. Actually, that might be the only tune you'd want to play through it. 

Build:
http://www.diystompboxes.com/smfforum/index.php?topic=99943.0

Sloppy Clip:
http://www.diystompboxes.com/smfforum/index.php?topic=103248.msg919082#msg919082

[Brossman]

Any headway with this one? +1 for fuzz flatulence! It's my favorite part. 'Round these parts, we call that "Blurt", y'know that sputtery fighting compression before all the sound can get outta there?  yea, that's the good stuff

[ghostsauce]

+1 for fuzz flatulence! It's my favorite part. 'Round these parts, we call that "Blurt"

Oh I get it, like that guy with the segway



Anyway, I put it back on the bench yesterday and started putting fresh wires through it. This could end up changing the strength of the fuzzboost, cause 2 or 3 of the wires connecting it were hanging by threads and actually fell off even though I was being very careful to avoid it. So we'll see if I got everything back together right, haha. I'm also shielding the fuzz cavity at least, and probably the whole thing while I'm at it, to help any noise issues. Getting a bunch of pics of the board and I'll try to get those up soon.

[ghostsauce]

OK! So a lot of time has gone by, but I finally fixed up the guitar like I wanted. I kept the same vibe but dropped a new pickguard and bridge in so that everything lines up the way it should:

http://www.ghostsauce.net/random/pics/DadsTele-14.JPG

And now I am trying to duplicate the fuzzboost circuit and drop it into a pedal for my dad for Christmas. But I need help.. it works with the exception that it is too quiet. The output is quieter than the bypassed signal. I currently have it hardwired to some jacks and am using a true bypass looper to turn it on and off while I fiddle with it. I need you guys to help me make this thing work if you would.. so here's pics of the original circuit in the guitar, and a traced layout:

http://www.ghostsauce.net/random/pics/HC1.JPG
http://www.ghostsauce.net/random/pics/HC2.JPG
http://www.ghostsauce.net/random/pics/HarmonicClipper01.png  --> original onboard circuit
http://www.ghostsauce.net/random/pics/HarmonicClipper02.png  --> What I built

Dad had named it the harmonic clipper because of how it was chopping off the top n bottom of the wave. But anyways, what on earth did I do wrong? I thought maybe the gain of the 2n2925 I'm using was too low, so I tried my other two and same problem. I tried a 2n5088 too and it sounds the same.

[ghostsauce]

I might have mixed up the input/output of the circuit, but I think I got it right. It sounds the same both ways though, haha. Actually, I did use a 100k trimpot instead of a 2k, but I think that's ok. At the furthest clockwise it there is no sound, then soon after you get sound and it slowly grows louder until you get to full counter-clockwise.  Idk.. is this my problem?

[mth5044]

Here's the schematic based on your layout. Can't tell if it's correct from your images unless you want to say what wire is going where.



If only I remembered the 1000 times someone told me how to resize images.

EDIT: hang on, missed a part