Big Muff adventures pt.1, including updated verified Ram's Head vero layout

[monkeyxx]

hey Y'all, my first contribution here

I just accomplished my first (planning a lot more) stripboard/vero project, with immediate success!  well, sort of.  there was a loud footswitch pop due to a "verified" schematic and layout, but I've corrected it and included it below for anyone wanting to build a nice sounding Ram's Head style big muff pi.  I think the GGG schematic is based on a PNP trace, yet it's an NPN pedal.  confusing, EH made both at different times.  I think GGG needs to be corrected.  there was also a pulldown resistor value error on the layout that's floating around but I fixed that too

I was surprised to find it drastically different from my NYC reissue big muff, which has been rehoused to a new sturdier and smaller enclosure (I HATE the EH big muff enclosures...built this one for a friend...happy present/good riddance!) and I also added a mid control, which has been very much useful for "cutting through."  the "ram's head" NAILS the gilmour tones from The Wall (well, add reverb, compression OD/Boost to taste), just dripping with overtones.  the NYC muff is better for the Jack White thing, with that huge roaring bass when muted.  As good as the Ram's Head is, it doesn't do that doomy wild chugawhump on the low strings that you can get with the NYC.  The ram's head is much brighter and more distortion-like and more general-purpose useful.  complex chord voices come through adequately--on the NYC you might as well just give up going past power chords.  I'll have to build an op amp muff (and plan to) for the Corgan thing, but the NYC gets kinda close.

I tried lifting the diodes (jumpering out with switches) on the ram's head but the results were not so nice, maybe I'll try again on the NYC

here are photos from my adventures, and the updated layout!  which is of course verified.  when I build another for myself it's going to go in a 1960B sized enclosure, along with the future muffs (ideal total list: triangle, civil war russian, ram's head, NYC, op amp, and perhaps a Creamy Dreamer or Skreddy Mayo)

[monkeyxx]

I should have looked at http://www.kitrae.net/music/music_big_muff.html before building if I'd want to have been accurate with component type selection, but, ah well.  They were all over the board (pun intended) back then anyway with capacitor types, etc.  You might want to skip the electrolytics and use large value poly capacitors if you want to be more accurate.  Sounds great the way I did it though, no complaints!  I used 2N5088BU Fairchild transistors

[monkeyxx]

the obligatory gut shot.  nothing too fancy, didn't bother with precision wire lengths or hst (should have on LED)

also added a switch to switch the output capacitor from electrolytic to metal film, just to learn the difference in tone, same value.  the electrolitic sounds "slushier" and the metal film is "tighter" sort of firmer and clearer in the bass I prefer the metal film in this position.  the input capacitor is 10uF as in the layout above, I socketed it, too, for experimentation.  1uF and .1uF were a bit lacking in bass and sort of dull sounding in this circuit so I kept it at 10uF electro.

[shiner_man]

I'm confused as to the orientation of the capacitors in your vero layout.  They appear to differ from the picture of the board you 
actually wired.

Does the + on your vero layout denote the anode for the capacitors? If so, it appears that C12, C13, and C15 are all backwards
in the picture you posted of the board you wired.

Or maybe I'm more confused than I originally though...

[monkeyxx]

the picture was probably taken before I found the error in the original layout.  my layout with the "+" signs is correct, don't mind the photos, they'll just confuse things.  of course the + indicates the positive terminal of the capacitor

[shiner_man]

the picture was probably taken before I found the error in the original layout.  my layout with the "+" signs is correct, don't mind the photos, they'll just confuse things.  of course the + indicates the positive terminal of the capacitor

Thanks for clearing that up.  I was looking for an alternative to my current Russian Big Muff (which I love).  The problem is 1: it's frigging huge and 2: the volume knob is way to sensitive.

Hows this one sound?

[monkeyxx]

it's really "shreddy" sounding.  kind of clear and distortiony as opposed to the woofy bulge of the NYC big muff, very mid scooped.  Listen to pink floyd's The Wall to kind of get an idea.  It sounds so good on bass and so good on lower register guitar riffing...all kinds of overtones and the most epic sounding tonal character for single notes.  I haven't tried a russian yet, would like to, but certainly any big muff can be built into a very small enclosure given that you use a small layout and small components (capacitors) even the EH big muffs can be rehoused into smaller boxes.  they just wanted them to be huge for some reason.  that bugs me too.

the volume knob taper is probably pretty common to all big muffs... you probably want to try a different taper and value of pot for the volume pot.  I'm not sure of specifics but I've read various mentions of this on the internets, you could start googling or just do some experiments with a breadboard till you find what you want.  I personally need to brush up on volume pot theory myself I wish I had the knowsits to tell you which direction to go in but I currently don't, I just know that it can be done.  maybe someone else can chime in on this.

[monkeyxx]

here's another one I just came up with, a Triangle layout