Which fuzzes and other effects convincingly sound like something's busted?

[Processaurus]

Musically I've thinking about the original meaning of overdrive, that its misusing a piece of equipment.  There are a lot of classic, smooth, "warm", tubelike, musical distortions out there, but I'm looking for ideas on what DIY stuff has that an unsettling sound in a  modern context, the way overdrive was when it meant your amp was bad, like most people would assume "somethings not right" with that pedal.  A sound old people would question.  Degraded sounds.  Simulating torturing crappy mixers, soundcards, practice amps, dying batteries, how music sounds over cell phones, crappy MP3s.  For instance, one of my favorite distortion sounds is distorted video cameras with auto gain.  Also the sound when you turn some tube amps to standby and play, that crazy, misbiased, dying sound.

I'm envisioning a swiss army knife kinda pedal with some of these kind of sounds:
Static, crackles
laughable levels of noise
Bad cord simulator
digital clipping
random pitch bending

What kind of stuff do you like in this vein?  Any overlooked gems? Not looking for synthesizer-ish effects, more like realistic busted sounds, if that makes sense.  That sound unstable but can be reproduced consistently.  I read an interview with Devo and they remarked on how it takes lots of very high end equipment to get the sound of their original crummy equipment breaking down, but repeatably and consistently.

[Ge_Whiz]

Start with something simple like a fuzz face and start misbiasing the transistors. Very high value old resistors at points across the signal path will help to increase noise. Diodes, both series and parallel, in particular places will mess with the sound. Tim's LoFoMoFo is also a good place to start.

Alternatively, there are a significant number of members here who appear to achieve these effects regularly without trying. Get in quick and offer to buy their builds. 

[southtown]

[caress]

I'm envisioning a swiss army knife kinda pedal with some of these kind of sounds:
Static, crackles
laughable levels of noise
Bad cord simulator
digital clipping
random pitch bending

you know, i've been searching for similar sounds...especially the random pitch bending kind of like my bloody valentine.  (although i know he did it for real on his guitar )  this has proved almost impossible to find.

check out geofex.com and look on the main page for the low fidelity pedal for some noisiness.  i haven't built it yet, but it looks promising for static-y noisiness.
also there's ken stone's psycho LFO which is a pseudorandom LFO using multiple square LFO's to simulate a random wave, which i think is then smoothed so it has a random tri/sine feel.  you could prob incorporate this into a preexisting vibrato circuit placed after a fuzz! for some random pitch bending.  possibly the boss vb-2?  or something similar...

also for more crackly crap sounds, just misbias your transistors on a boost or fuzz.  add that as a pot to have complete control.

[RLBJR65]

Busted Amp maybe?
The Tone God's Blade looks simple and can sound pretty bad (good?) http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v515/TheToneGod/blade.jpg
Clips and stuff can be found in this thread, http://www.diystompboxes.com/smfforum/index.php?topic=51877.0

[Seljer]

something to lift off the ground connection to get that lovable buzz as from a failing cable?
though it wouldn't work if you were placing the pedal in the middle of your pedal chian while using a single DC adaptor and daisychaining to power all the other pedals

[R.G.]

As noted, Geofex.

Pseudorandom LFO - random-ish but repeating sounding settings. Can be used to switch effects at certain levels if not summed to an analog voltage, so you could randomishly switch settings on another effect by running the multiple outputs into the control inputs of a logic decoder or an analog switch like the CD405x series.

Lo-Fidelity pedal for noise and bandwidth limiting. All by itself it gives the effect of a noisy old telephone line.

Variable Stuttering pedal - broken cable simulator, especially when driven by something like the PR LFO.

[The Tone God]

Christine is a pretty crazy little thing. Also adding a Punisher to certain circuits can to do some funny stuff. I think the Noise Swash it kind cool from the sound clips as is the Sky Ripper.

Andrew

[Ronsonic]

Busted Amp maybe?
The Tone God's Blade looks simple and can sound pretty bad (good?) http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v515/TheToneGod/blade.jpg
Clips and stuff can be found in this thread, http://www.diystompboxes.com/smfforum/index.php?topic=51877.0

That's the first one I thought of. The 'scope traces of that thing look like textbook examples of broken amplifiers.

Ron

[tcobretti]

Time Escobedo has some stuff like that at his site.  I think his LofoMofo is supposed to sound like a blown speaker.

[petemoore]

  Hearing the Blade samples, I wonder what that'd sound like with the prefuzz on it.

[Antero]

Variable Stuttering pedal - broken cable simulator, especially when driven by something like the PR LFO.

Awesome idea.

[Processaurus]

Wow, thanks for all the ideas.

Christine is a pretty crazy little thing. Also adding a Punisher to certain circuits can to do some funny stuff. Andrew

I'll have to make a Christine sometime, that sounded great in your sample.  Punisher looks interesting too, thats actually right in the vein of what I was hoping for, something to add animation and response to the brokedness of an effect.  Which circuits have you tried it on that you liked, out of curiosity?

As noted, Geofex.

Pseudorandom LFO - random-ish but repeating sounding settings. Can be used to switch effects at certain levels if not summed to an analog voltage, so you could randomishly switch settings on another effect by running the multiple outputs into the control inputs of a logic decoder or an analog switch like the CD405x series.

Lo-Fidelity pedal for noise and bandwidth limiting. All by itself it gives the effect of a noisy old telephone line.

I'm a fan, I've made all those, with the telephone noise I need to try some different transistors for the noise I think, mine wouldn't do anything, I'd like to be able to adjust the bandwidth too, mine sounded too wide range to be lo-fi.  I'll need to take a look back at it and see if something could be done with dual pots perhaps.  Are there any circuits you guys know of that give different characters of noise, some crackly, some pinker, some radio-ey, some bad ground like?

Variable Stuttering pedal - broken cable simulator, especially when driven by something like the PR LFO.

Great idea, thats kind of what I originally envisioned by the name.  It would be cool on a momentary switch, when its pressed, boom, your cable is bad.  That might be good with the PR LFO, I tried it with a phaser and it wasn't sounding random enough with 4 voltage levels, but something somewhat predictable might be nice if it was driving a comparator that was driving the stutterer.  Maybe a more slopey PR LFO would use 4 triangle waves...

something to lift off the ground connection to get that lovable buzz as from a failing cable?

Good add on to the variable broken cable simulator.  It would be great if it could randomly fuzz some stuff out

also for more crackly crap sounds, just misbias your transistors on a boost or fuzz.  add that as a pot to have complete control.

How about driving bias with a pseudo random LFO, to animate the crappiness?  Or Punishering it?   

Can be used to switch effects at certain levels if not summed to an analog voltage, so you could randomishly switch settings on another effect by running the multiple outputs into the control inputs of a logic decoder or an analog switch like the CD405x series.

Like have two pots (or trim pots) for one parameter that could get chaotically switched between?  Sounds like a unique idea in the world of compact floor effects.  Nice.

Caress, for the random pitch bending, I'd love something like that too, like a bad cassette sim, or cyclical like a wobbly record, a friend of mine has a pefftronics rando-matic, its definitely in that ballpark, I have a half notion to try something similar combining LFOs with two small clones I have sitting around that I've been poking at occasionally.

[mattpocket]

pungent bzzz... look it up

I would have thought your going to need to mod something though to get ALL of those effects, or just do something wrong like I do that normally helps make stuff sound bad! haha

[Processaurus]

Looked it up.  Thats not bad!

Its funny the riff in the sound clip is Hey Hey, My My, Neil's got one of the greatest busted sounds of all.  And he needs crazy custom gear like the Whizzer to get it consistently.

[The Tone God]

I'll have to make a Christine sometime, that sounded great in your sample.  Punisher looks interesting too, thats actually right in the vein of what I was hoping for, something to add animation and response to the brokedness of an effect.  Which circuits have you tried it on that you liked, out of curiosity?

I was going to build Christine and Punisher into one box for the SMD FX-X but changed my mind. I think that would have been a neat combo. Maybe add a Blade in there for kicks.

I actually haven't hooked Punisher up to anything that people build around here as I don't build clones so I can't comment personally. I have had reports of people enjoying using it on things like boasters and FFs/transistor BMPs.

Andrew