ovation fuzz from the late 60's/// help me resurrect it?

[pinkjimiphoton]

k bro,
here's a bunch of pics of the volume control and how they are wired. i don't have the time right now to be able to physically trace them, but this way you can see how they connect. the tone and volume controls for channel one and two are wired identically, same color codes. the cap off the dual pot is .o47u
think of it maybe like the klon drive control, the double thing i forget, been years.

the 220k resistor is between wiper of top pot, and pin 3 of the bottom one.
there are multiple connections in some cases to the volume pots. its really @#$%in weird.















i tried to get it from as many angles as possible without having to re-disassemble it. t minus 1 hour and 50 minutes til i gotta go.

hope they help. i can trace 'em all too if need be again.
be right back with a schem for the volume pot

[pinkjimiphoton]

ok, here's a qnd schem for the volume pots, and how they hook up and where.
the key is the key. its not on the left early with the channels, its pin 15, left to right, from the backs of the boards.
sorry i was unclear before, my first attempt at tracing a circuit like this.
i also probably confused pinout of the damn pots. i forget constantly which orientation is right, and have found nothing is necessaril right

i think the way they wire the pot, it takes advantage of the taper of each half of the pot. or something. did i mention its weird?




anyways...




liddle bid clozer, bud!

[Rob Strand]

here's a bunch of pics of the volume control and how they are wired. i don't have the time right now to be able to physically trace them, but this way you can see how they connect. the tone and volume controls for channel one and two are wired identically, same color codes. the cap off the dual pot is .o47u
think of it maybe like the klon drive control, the double thing i forget, been year

Great, thanks a lot.

With that stuff and the big list you posted a couple of posts back I've got a heap to go on with now. 

[Rob Strand]

sorry i was unclear before, my first attempt at tracing a circuit like this.
i also probably confused pinout of the damn pots. i forget constantly which orientation is right, and have found nothing is necessaril right

Cool, that saved me quite a bit of unraveling.

[pinkjimiphoton]

lol..
i just memorized in guitars, from the back with the pins sticking up and the shaft pointing down, the furthermost left one goes to ground lol.

that said tho, i've seen it written as pin 1 AND pin 3, and seen it in schematics like that, too, so... beats me.

wanna really go insane? unravel the mysteries of why we only work with uf, nf and pf, and we're off by a factor of 1000 on each one from reality lol. there's a BUNCH OF WEIRD VALUE CAPS!! LOL

anyways.. gotta button up this sg i'm bringin tonite for a change from the usual les paul or firebird.

check in when i get in. later bro

[Rob Strand]

i just memorized in guitars, from the back with the pins sticking up and the shaft pointing down, the furthermost left one goes to ground lol.
that said tho, i've seen it written as pin 1 AND pin 3, and seen it in schematics like that, too, so... beats me.

Yes the world is a mix-up place.    I remember watching this video on Bourns "Professional Series" pots.   It was the most mixed-up piece of rubbish I've ever seen.   Their documents sucked as well.  Basically you couldn't work out the tapers of their pan pots at all.  So much for "Professional" info.

wanna really go insane? unravel the mysteries of why we only work with uf, nf and pf, and we're off by a factor of 1000 on each one from reality lol. there's a BUNCH OF WEIRD VALUE CAPS!! LOL

Sometimes I can fend off that stuff but it's sure a pain.

anyways.. gotta button up this sg i'm bringin tonite for a change from the usual les paul or firebird.

You have so much cool stuff!   I've tried to downsize my life but it ends-up being too much and not enough at the same time  .

[pinkjimiphoton]

well, i was down to about 40 guitar until les paul #25 got bought today lol.

i am a total gear whore. at one point, i had LITERALLY 70 of my own, and 38 for sale. 108 is the most i've had at once.

way too many. its bad.

i'm down to maybe, 100 pedals now...lol..

maybe...14, 15 amps...

and a 24 space rack

you know, just the basics .......

my name is pink and i am a gear horder with chronic GAS

[Rob Strand]

well, i was down to about 40 guitar until les paul #25 got bought today lol.

i am a total gear whore. at one point, i had LITERALLY 70 of my own, and 38 for sale. 108 is the most i've had at once.

way too many. its bad.

i'm down to maybe, 100 pedals now...lol..

maybe...14, 15 amps...

and a 24 space rack

you know, just the basics .......

That's a crazy load of stuff.   Do you have to carry out a stock take once a year and report to the shareholders .

I'm probably not going to get far today.  We have visitors.

One thing I can't account for is Reverb-Blend pot terminal 1.      Reverb-Blend pot terminal 3 has a weird connection, it goes to ground when the reverb is on full!   So there must be a weird connection going on.  I can think of one but without Reverb-Blend pot terminal 1 I'm just making up stuff.

[pinkjimiphoton]

i will take a look at it tomor....err... today later and verify what connects where to that. i still gotta get the switches anyways.
no worries or hurries. i'm faily lazy

[Rob Strand]

no worries or hurries

Yeah, no worries.

I'll leave the Reverb for a bit and see if I can get the channel preamp(s) drawn up today.

[pinkjimiphoton]

no problem bro,
we gotta get the dang switching done up anyways to make sense of it all... til we do, we're not gonna know whats what, as the color code of the wiring changes. i THINK each channel is switched before the reverb, to me makes the most sense.
easy way to try is to play something and kill the switch and see if it splashes over. if it does, it will be pre-verb, if not, post.

all will be revealed. i gotta wake up some more, and i'll head for the dungeon!

[Rob Strand]

Here's what I have so far. 
I've created a pic for the designators for Ch1 (and Ch2) use the prev designator pics for the other boards.
Updated schematics.

[Rob Strand]

The volume control at the input is weird.  Loads the pickups a lot too.

The way the fuzz connects around to the circuit is weird and so to is the fact the fuzz circuit is driving the the emitter output where the tremolo

If I saw those things on a schematic I would think it was wrong!

[pinkjimiphoton]

holy shit dude you been busy!!!
me too... took me like, two hours or so to figure out how the heck to re-attach the mixer board to the switch strip without unwiring the whole mess. finally managed to get the screws in.. THAT was fun... used double sided sticky things finally, squished in to hold the screws, magnetized a little jewler screwdriver to get the locks and nuts on... discovered if i stuck the screwdriver thru the lock and nut, and held 'em in place with my finger, i could put the tip right on the screws and drop 'em onto it. clever, huh? yeah, took me hours, lol HOURS, and worked way better in theory than in practice! finally got 'em on a couple threads, removed the sticky crap and screwed 'em in and reinstalled the switching strip.
tightened up all the card retainers, used some hyper strength luthier grade cyanoacrylate to glue the broken mount back to the chassis, permanently mounted them three 100n caps to the fuzz 
it had to be done. the fuzz is cool now.

depending on how hard ya drive the channel two channel appears to determines how hard ya drive the fuzz.
its wicked cool.

then i took a look at my princeton and changed all the freekin preamp tubes. turned out # 1 needed the socket cleaned. so i fixed that. just a side thing, but now it will sound a lot better. i may start gigging with it.
pulling the trigger on stuff to build a footswitch for the fuzz reverb and trem. i gotta box already. will run the led's off the power supply, probably give them their own hot and ground to keep noise down.

the fuzz now overpowers the tremolo, which is kinda cool, cuz as the fuzz decays the clean trem sorta fades in. kinda trippy. sounds a lot like the princeton, but kinda weak.
if it can be given more balls, well, this IS 2019 and we're cookin with 'lectricity, son!

the thing is nice and clean, everything works now. the tuner appears to have its level controlled by volume 2, and it needs to be the proper level for the eye to wink of course the bloody thing is LOUD AS @#$% so you'd need to put it on standby at that point. i must have bumped the trimmer inside, cuz all the way up isn't a perfect G any more.
the guitar doesn't come out the outputs when the tuner is on. it did before, so apparently, i fixed or broke something.

the reverb saturates beautifully and is deep and dank as the patchouli stenchin off some hipster's dungeon.
surprisingly quiet. when the preamps are overdriven, they do it fairly gracefully. when you jumper them together as i said, into channel 1 # 2 and then jumper chan 1 #1 to chan 2 #2 it seems to cascade them somewhat, so the channel one controls how hard ya drive it, channel two you can crank til it sounds good, and then crank the fuzz just barely on and its bloody @#$%in perfectly brilliant.

when i do a demo for this sucker, watch, they'll come popping outta the woodwork. or dumps. one or the other. from 35 dollar fringe interest items no one cares about to next boot-tweek thousand dollar gizmotron. its hip! its now! its 50 @#$%in years ago!
lol

enough blatherskitin' the balderdash.. here's the reverb pot wiring, and socket keys ... compare to the pics of the boards if any question about orientation, i guess.




and here is the switching matrix <not including the reverb> and the power supply side of the terminal block, as two of the wires from the tuner circuit connect there.






i gotta digest the pics tomorrow when it ain't 3:12 am lol. burnt hippy!

dude. you so totally rock. this is cool as hell!

i'll get all the values off stuff asap and mark 'em on the schematics.
but i think this sucker's done, i mean, we've been thru every aspect of the circuit now i think.

AND the original one not only lives again, and sounds great, now its gotta FUZZ that don't SUCK.

the top boost acts a little different with the bigger fuzz caps, too, but, hey, its better this way.

trust me. i'm a fuzz magician.

who needs sleep and is babbling,.... lol nite rob

[Rob Strand]

me too... took me like, two hours or so to figure out how the heck to re-attach the mixer board to the switch strip without unwiring the whole mess. finally managed to get the screws in..

Those fiddly jobs can take up time.

depending on how hard ya drive the channel two channel appears to determines how hard ya drive the fuzz.
its wicked cool.

It's good you can improve it.  We know a more now than the 60's so no point holding onto the old.

then jumper chan 1 #1 to chan 2 #2 it seems to cascade them somewhat, so the channel one controls how hard ya drive it, channel two you can crank til it sounds good, and then crank the fuzz just barely on and its bloody @#$%in perfectly brilliant.

I wonder if some of the coolness comes from the higher supply voltages?

hen i took a look at my princeton and changed all the freekin preamp tubes.

You must have a small fortune of tubes tied up in all those amps you have.

enough blatherskitin' the balderdash.. here's the reverb pot wiring, and socket keys ... compare to the pics of the boards if any question about orientation, i guess

Thanks for drawing that up.     When I take that drawing, the schematics, and the previous wiring lists, then try to put it together it all falls in a heap.  Only a few things line up and I don't even know if those are correct.   I started to draw a picture but there were so many ambiguous connections I gave up.   One problem is your mixer numbers and my schematic numbers don't quite line up.

and here is the switching matrix <not including the reverb> and the power supply side of the terminal block, as two of the wires from the tuner circuit connect there.

We should try to work out the switching   Initially I though  you might try to piggy back something onto it but maybe you are better off just doing you own thing for the mods.

'll get all the values off stuff asap and mark 'em on the schematics.
but i think this sucker's done, i mean, we've been thru every aspect of the circuit now i think.

Yeah the values should be easy since I've marked out the designators.    I'm still not confident about board interconnections.

AND the original one not only lives again, and sounds great, now its gotta FUZZ that don't SUCK.
the top boost acts a little different with the bigger fuzz caps, too, but, hey, its better this way.
trust me. i'm a fuzz magician.

I suspect you could spend weeks tweaking it  .


Not sure if I'll get anywhere today.

[pinkjimiphoton]

me too... took me like, two hours or so to figure out how the heck to re-attach the mixer board to the switch strip without unwiring the whole mess. finally managed to get the screws in..

Those fiddly jobs can take up time.

depending on how hard ya drive the channel two channel appears to determines how hard ya drive the fuzz.
its wicked cool.

It's good you can improve it.  We know a more now than the 60's so no point holding onto the old.

only thing i can see needing improvement would have been the fuzz. i AM curious about the extra connections for it, but haven't had a chance yet to look at the schematic and compare it.

then jumper chan 1 #1 to chan 2 #2 it seems to cascade them somewhat, so the channel one controls how hard ya drive it, channel two you can crank til it sounds good, and then crank the fuzz just barely on and its bloody @#$%in perfectly brilliant.

I wonder if some of the coolness comes from the higher supply voltages?[/quote]

it could i guess, but i think the fuzz is only running on 10v, i don't think it would matter if it were run at 9v. the preamps and stuff are a bit higher tho, so yeah, some more headroom maybe. its definitely loud and pretty clean!

hen i took a look at my princeton and changed all the freekin preamp tubes.

You must have a small fortune of tubes tied up in all those amps you have.[/quote]

funny thing is, i only own a handful of "tube" amps.. princeton, silkyn, pro reverb and a couple weird things from the 60's i gotta restore one day... the cyber twin is hybrid, all the rest is solid state, and largely ancient and germanium.
i use russian tubes for the outputs, i buy 'em in matched quads for about 40 bux shipped, and then for preamp tubes, depends on whats around and what they go for. if i can't get a good enough deal online, my bud mikey hooks me up a couple points over his wholesale cost. sometimes i throw him a fuzz or something. <he is a real mutha!!> on the forums he's "agitprop"

enough blatherskitin' the balderdash.. here's the reverb pot wiring, and socket keys ... compare to the pics of the boards if any question about orientation, i guess

Thanks for drawing that up.     When I take that drawing, the schematics, and the previous wiring lists, then try to put it together it all falls in a heap.  Only a few things line up and I don't even know if those are correct.   I started to draw a picture but there were so many ambiguous connections I gave up.   One problem is your mixer numbers and my schematic numbers don't quite line up.[/quote]

well, the mixer has 12 connections, and there's more than one wire to some of them. some of the connections are hard to see in the pictures, for sure. some are wicked close together, too.
perhaps the thing i need to do is to go back, and re-draw the connections to the individual boards. i think whats messing you up is the keys, as you'd like to think they'd be oriented the same depending on board, but they're not. the PREAMP keys are the same. but like... next in line, you have the fuzz board, trace side towards you from the back. pull the fuzz card, and suddenly the reverb board, component side, is staring at you. so i guess i'm gonna have to try and digest it from here and draw it up... at least the board, number of connections, which slot the key is in from left to right <or, as the case may be, from front to back>
and where each connection goes to and terminates.
i swear, its probably easier than it seems, and i must take the blame for that. when i first started pulling stuff, i just arbitrarily counted the slots, and not necessarily left and right from the same orientations as i was spinning the chassis around trying to see where all the wires came and went. i think i can do that, and will try and start on it tomorrow. hopefully, that will make things a little less @#$%ed up to try and grok.

and here is the switching matrix <not including the reverb> and the power supply side of the terminal block, as two of the wires from the tuner circuit connect there.

We should try to work out the switching   Initially I though  you might try to piggy back something onto it but maybe you are better off just doing you own thing for the mods.[/quote]

the ONLY thing i have modded was tacking 3 caps on in parallel with the original ones on the fuzz board. no other modifications have been made at all. the switching is completely documented. the switching is also documented,
there's a 6 pin din plug, and 4 connections are used... one for the fuzz <orange> one for the reverb <blue, i think> and one for the trem <green, i think> looks like when NOT in use, each module is simply shorted to ground with the footswitch. each color wire eventually connects back to each circuit card, but there is no channel switching.  the top boost switches aren't footswitchable. i DID draw out where the wires from each switch go to... i would say, let me try and draw up how it goes together and post it, take a couple days off where ya aren't seeing this pig in your sleep

'll get all the values off stuff asap and mark 'em on the schematics.
but i think this sucker's done, i mean, we've been thru every aspect of the circuit now i think.

Yeah the values should be easy since I've marked out the designators.    I'm still not confident about board interconnections.[/quote]

i'm confidant with the board connections i have in my notes, i traced everything visually, and used the continuity beeper in my meter to double and triple check everything. the parallel connections thing is whats making it so bloody weird!!!

AND the original one not only lives again, and sounds great, now its gotta FUZZ that don't SUCK.
the top boost acts a little different with the bigger fuzz caps, too, but, hey, its better this way.
trust me. i'm a fuzz magician.

I suspect you could spend weeks tweaking it  .[/quote]

probably, but i don't see a need to, really. with the bigger caps it sounds REALLY good, and has more than enough balls for what i would use. maybe a tad less harsh would be good, or a smidge more sustain, but it's actually....well,....GOOD now. i will try and get some vid soon,  hard to do when g is home on the weekends, she doesn't "get it" and it just kinda annoys her.




[/quote]
Not sure if I'll get anywhere today.
[/quote]

no worries!! you've been kicking ass, take it easy for a bit, and then come back to it if ya want to. no hurries here. pretty sure i can at least get all the board connections etc done from here.
do ya think its better to draw them, or just list them?
if just listing, it may be easier.

like..
chan 1 socket
1
2
3
4
5
6.....etc etc

fuzz pot 1 to blah blah
fuzz pot 2 to... stuff like that.

i can make sure all the key spots are notated, and which side of the board they apply to, which i think is a major confusion point.

no worries!! we've come this far, i think if i can do that it will be a lot easier to make sense out of.

[Rob Strand]

I'll get back to this tomorrow.  Too much for my little brain today - got up at 3:30am.

[pinkjimiphoton]

ouch!
get some rest dude!!! yer as bad as me!!

i figured out how things got lost in the translation.  the preamp board connectionsto the socket on the "xray" board you posted are actually backwards somehow.

it looks like you're looking at the components and seeing the traces thru the board. that part is right.
but the components face away from you inside the amp when you open it up.
so when you look at it from behind, the sockets go from close to you to further from you, or left to right. in that case, the locator pin is actually # 15, not pin 4. somehow our pinouts got reversed in understanding. you were thinking left to right looking at the component side of the board, but i was going the opposite cuz the boards face the other way.

i know thats too much to lay on yer head right now lol but if ya do it my way, all the connections connect together and add up.

to further add insult to injury, the fuzz board faces away from you with the components. so in that case, locator pin is socket #10.
the reverb board is behind it. the components on that face you. in that case, the locator pin is socket #5

all of the above left to right, or closest to furthest in the case of the preamp board, the tuner and the tremolo.
further, the trem and tuner orient the opposite way from the damn preamp boards.  all face the reverb fuzz and mixer in the middle, with the component sides.

the mixer, from the back
left to right

pin 1, orange,  channel 2 output only, normally closed switch to tip of channel 2 only jack

pin 2, brown, i have to check that one again, or put it against the rest of the data when i try n put the mess together

pin 3, dark brown, channel 2 output only, tip/hot

pin 4, blue, reverb socket pin #10

pin 5, light brown, channel two volume # 3 (1?)

pin 6,  black, tuner on/off switch pin  #5

pin 7, 3 connections all black, all ground plane of mixer board
a :  channel 1 & 2 parallel output ground
b:   channel  1 & 2 volume  pin # 1
c:   reverb socket # 12 and reverb pot # 1

pin 9, red.....? gotta find it

pin 10 , double connection, red
a: channel 1, socket # 6
b: channel 2, socket # 6

pin 11 purple, reverb socket pin #8


EDIT: @#$%, i have to look at the board again and check the dang wires. again, our wires our crossed, on the parts designator pic you posted, we are numbering the board connections, again, exactly opposite, and apparently i screwed up when i was writing the wires.

again, the board goes, left to right, starting with the orange wire, and ending with the purple one. the components/switches facing away from you, like when looking in the amp.

the pic of the mixer is actually mirrored from what i'm trying to describe, so its gonna be way more confusing. we gotta stick with just one way to try and describe this, cuz right now stuff's getting backwards from what i'm trying to document for you to be able to sort this mess. so ... stay tuned. let me get this shit all in one post with all the data and all the connections correllated.

hang in there bro!



i'm gonna scan my notes from tonite, and post them in a little bit and call it a nite.
i wrote down all the values for the resistors and caps on both preamp boards,
and yes, all q's bc109c AFAICT

two much to try and type. i'd be here til tomorrow afternoon.

[pinkjimiphoton]

what i mean is, on the mixer, what i call pin 1 you call pin 11, on the channels, what i call pin one, you call pin 18.

no worries. we'll get the mess sorted out. peace!

[Rob Strand]

get some rest dude!!! yer as bad as me!!

Yeah, probably because I've been drinking more coffee lately.  Today was 4:30am 

i figured out how things got lost in the translation.  the preamp board connectionsto the socket on the "xray" board you posted are actually backwards somehow.

Yes, the trace side are xray pics looking *through* the board.   I use those for tracing and checking.   I always do that when I tracing ckts.  It's much easier to match-up the pics of the parts with the traces.    Maybe added to the confusion.

There was a pattern to the numbering I used:
- Pin 1 is always closest to the key (doesn't matter which side you look at the board)
- It turns out, when looking from the component side with the pins at the bottom, all the keys slots are on your left. The mixer board doesn't have a key so I number it with pin 1 on the left to be the same as the others.

The mixer is a problem because it has eyelets/posts and some solder points.  I assigned a number to each connection whatever the type.

i know thats too much to lay on yer head right now lol but if ya do it my way, all the connections connect together and add up.

I'm sure all the numberings match-up in their own universe. It's funny how simple things get mixed up.

the mixer, from the back
left to right

OK thanks, I'll see how that matches up.    Hopefully it is just reverse numbered.  I know I've got orange on the right (when looking at the components with the connection at the bottom).

what i mean is, on the mixer, what i call pin 1 you call pin 11, on the channels, what i call pin one, you call pin 18.

no worries. we'll get the mess sorted out. peace!

Yep, no worries.   I think I've got more than enough to sort out