combo fuzz-dist-boost pedal ideas?

[cnspedalbuilder]

Hello, in the time I've been on the forum, I've learned so much, and I've built 6 kit pedals and two vero. Because I now have the disease, I must build again. I've decided that I want to build a combo pedal in a single enclosure that'll run off a single 9-volt input.I'm thinking that a fuzz-distortion-boost combo would be great. Before I ask y'all about the technical stuff, I wanted to get some feedback about what to combine.

I love the Rat and Big Muff, but these pedals always get lost in the mix--but maybe a boost can help with that. Also, I have a Harmonic Percolator clone that is phenomenal, and I've heard some great Germanium Tonebender MKii demos on the net, So maybe one of those would work in a combo. Anyway, I was thinking about 2 of those 3 pedals and adding a Klon Centaur as a boost.

Have any of you tried this or do you have thoughts about good combos? Thanks!

[cnspedalbuilder]

Has anyone out there built a fuzz-distortion combo pedal?

[JustinFun]

I've found that treble booster into fuzz = distortion pedal, but the terms are slightly subjective so you might not feel the same way.

Certainly worth knocking up a 1 transistor boost like the brian may treble booster and trying it into your Big Muff.

[Elijah-Baley]

Yesterday I tried my two clones, a TS808 in front of a Big Muff (separated enclosure), sound great to me, especilly in high gain setting even if I got a bit of noise like that.
I found with the TS808 in front of a Bazz Fuzz I get a good distortion no fuzzy, too.

I'm building a Rat with 4 clipping options: Rat, Turbo Rat, You Dirty Rat and No Clipping. The cirucit is ready, but I need some days to put it into the box and test it better.

[lukeferg]

I agree that a rangemaster or other treble booster could be a great first stage for you. They work really well with Marshall type amps. I've got one on my board that I use to kick a few other pedals (usually a rat, sometimes a muff) into higher gain territory. Might work for you.

[cnspedalbuilder]

I was thinking that boost should go after the dirt, so this is interesting, it sounds like you have found boost to be better as an input to the dirt. I was listening to "That pedal show" and they got some fantastic sounds from mixing the Klon and the Rat. How do you feel about Klon vs. simpler boosts like Brian May or Rangemaster? I'm gonna do this with PCBs, so I'm not as worried about the complexity than I would be with vero.

[lukeferg]

I've never used a Klon so can't compare. A boost after distortion can also work but this is where the order of effects is really important. For me, the rangemaster has more of a vintage character that I often don't really want when I'm going for a higher gain sound. If I had the RM second then it would take on more of the character of the RM.
I do run a boost at the end of my chain but that is either an AMZ mosfet boost or an xotic EP booster. The mosfet is really clean so just lifts volume. The EP has its own flavour but it's a really nice flavour. Once again, really just lifts volume. I've been thinking about building another Ep to run at the start of my chain always on.
I reckon you need to beg, borrow or steal as many different OD and dist pedals you can and try them out in different orders to see what you like. Running two pedals in the same box (wired in series) will sound the same as two seperate pedals. Now, if you wired them in parallel and then had a blend pot to control how much of each pedal you wanted going through that would be interesting but I've never done that. Pretty sure it could be done though.

[ashcat_lt]

I was going to say about the opposite of what others said, but it kind of works out the same.  If you cut a bunch of treble going into a Rat, it can be a pretty decent fuzz sound.  If you were to mod the Rat so it doesn't cut as much bass (actually, it just doesn't boost the bass as much as the mid/highs, but...) it could probably be even better.  I think that a single switch could be used to drop a much bigger cap in parallel with the caps to ground and another in parallel with the cap across the gain pot in the feedback loop and get you from dist to fuzz and back pretty easy.

[cnspedalbuilder]

I've never used a Klon so can't compare. A boost after distortion can also work but this is where the order of effects is really important. For me, the rangemaster has more of a vintage character that I often don't really want when I'm going for a higher gain sound. If I had the RM second then it would take on more of the character of the RM.
I do run a boost at the end of my chain but that is either an AMZ mosfet boost or an xotic EP booster. The mosfet is really clean so just lifts volume. The EP has its own flavour but it's a really nice flavour. Once again, really just lifts volume. I've been thinking about building another Ep to run at the start of my chain always on.
I reckon you need to beg, borrow or steal as many different OD and dist pedals you can and try them out in different orders to see what you like. Running two pedals in the same box (wired in series) will sound the same as two seperate pedals. Now, if you wired them in parallel and then had a blend pot to control how much of each pedal you wanted going through that would be interesting but I've never done that. Pretty sure it could be done though.

I can definitely do some experimentation, and in fact, it would be straightforward to test the PCBs in various orders before boxing.

The idea about blending is really interesting. I wonder what a blend between a Rat and Big Muff would sound like??

[Elijah-Baley]

One of my favourite guitarist used two sounds by two amps together: distortion channel of amp one, and fuzz pedal in the amp two.
I would like to know how we could get a kind of that, a blending of a distortion pedal and a fuzz pedal.

[allesz]

The easy way, on the paper, would be to split a tonebendr mk2: a bjt booster going in a fuzz face.
Sadly I never breadboarded something good enough to be boxed 

[Ben Lyman]

Here's some of my favorite pedal combos:
SD-1 into RAT
TS-9 into RAT
TS-9 into SD-1
SD-1 into Red Llama
Red Llama into Rat
RM into RAT
RM into FF
RM into TB

any of these combos would be followed by a clean boost for solos.
I think it is also important to note how each effect is used when deciding the order. In my case, almost always the first in line will be set as an OD tone with slight volume boost, while the next in line will be the most used and set for a lot of distortion and sustain. Then I step on pedal #1 to goose pedal #2 into infinite sustain, last is that clean boost in case I can't hear myself when the drummer starts to get crazy on his cymbals