Fuzz Factory + Green Ringer in one pedal?

[Shawbrook]

I just finished my first project (a simple muff fuzz) and now I'm going to make a Fuzz Factory from musikding.de next (right here: http://www.musikding.de/product_info.php/info/p2192_The-Factory--germanium-fuzz-kit.html). I was thinking maybe I could add a Green Ringer (octaver) in the same box. A few questions (possibly nooby):

1. Will it sound alright? (subjective, I know, but if you can give an impression please do)
2. Will it fit in the BB-enclosure?
3. I've found a veroboard schematic on GGG for the Green Ringer, but this is without a blend pot. How can I add this and is it hard to do?
4. Since I will be putting two pedals in one box, will I need two batteries? And can I just use a regular 9v battery with it?
5. Lazy question: how do I connect the two pedals again?
6. Should the Green Ringer go post-fuzz or pre-fuzz?

Thanks.  

[Mark Hammer]

1. Will it sound alright? Um...I suppose.  You may be hardpressed to be able to tell the difference between when they are both on and when the circuit is malfunctioning, though.    That's a whole lot of noise.
2. Will it fit in the BB-enclosure? Yes, but that depends on the preferred knob placement and knob diameter.
3. I've found a veroboard schematic on GGG for the Green Ringer, but this is without a blend pot. How can I add this and is it hard to do?  Not hard to do, but what exactly do you want to blend with what?
4. Since I will be putting two pedals in one box, will I need two batteries? And can I just use a regular 9v battery with it?  One is probably quite sufficient, since neither of the two circuits appear to consume much current.  You may have to change the battery a littlew more frequently, but not as often as you change your strings.
5. Lazy question: how do I connect the two pedals again?
6. Should the Green Ringer go post-fuzz or pre-fuzz?  The two questions are linked.  I can think of reasons to stick the FF ahead of the GR and reasons to do the reverse.  I can also think of reasons to separate them with something else in between, like a send/receive loop.

The GR can need a bit of boost ahead of it to extract a more robust octave sound, which is why I say that I can think of reasons to send the FF to the GR, rather than the reverse.  But since the FF can produce quite sizzle itself, any octave produced by the GR would be lost in the chaos anyway.  You may want to provide yourself with some means for flipping their order.

[Shawbrook]

EDIT: Forget it, I'm not going to go with an octaver after all. It's probably not going to be very audible.

However, what about a bass boost instead of an octaver?

[bikini-inspector]

The GR can need a bit of boost ahead of it to extract a more robust octave sound, which is why I say that I can think of reasons to send the FF to the GR, rather than the reverse.  But since the FF can produce quite sizzle itself, any octave produced by the GR would be lost in the chaos anyway.  You may want to provide yourself with some means for flipping their order.

i'm sorry to disagree, but the green ringer into a fuzz pedal is absolute madness and sounds awesome!

i've built the green ringer with a sho in front into one enclosure and send it through a soda meiser with a starve knob. Mad sounds!

[Mark Hammer]

Oh I won't disagree.  There is a wealth of sounds there that make one grin like an idiot.  Whether they constitute something you'd want for a gig is a whole other matter.  As a Fuzz Face derivative, the FF can do some usable not-so-chaotic boost, which is serviceable n front of an octave fuzz.  But feeding the harmonic-rich output of an octaver to something that is going to be used to generate even more harmonic content from all that intermodulation is generally not something that most musicians will want to listen to for more than 2-4 minutes a day. 

I'm not saying that is insufficient justification, though.  And there is no law that says a 2-in-1 pedal must be used with both effects on at once. If you know you're going to be using one or the other, and you know where you want to be placing them in the pedal sequence, then a 2-in-1 saves you a second chassis, 2 phone jacks, and a patch cable...which ain't too shabby.  But it's a bit like pickles and ice cream.  I like them both, a lot, but together, not so much.

[bikini-inspector]

your're totally right in all that you've said! whatever makes you go is good!

one thing though: i don't know if you're familiar with the GR, but i feel it's absolutely NOT an octave up fuzz. Actually it is rather clean-ish when playing single strings and breaks up nice'n ringmodish with more strings. Lots of bass frequencies when the ringmod effect kicks in! As usual, this works best in higher frets...
(a pretty goofy one-taker recorded a while ago with SHO+GR -> sodameiser -> hydrosis fuzz -> another sodameiser   -> fender frontman into 4x10" bass cab: http://soundcloud.com/shiz-cake/output-2. To those who understand the lyrics: please don't listen )

in my view, octave up into fuzz seems to be a rather common way of doing it (eg. jack white, josh homme....), so the sho+gr (i call it the co.ck ring ) box is first in my effects chain (sho is a nice buffer, too).

fuzz into gr did not ever sound as musical imho...but i don't have a fuzz face or Ffactory, so maybe that's different.

ah well, the OP is outta here ....anyways i recommend the combination

regards

[Shawbrook]

Well, you and some other dude on another forum convinced me again.  I might still go for the Green Ringer along with the Fuzz Factory. About the order issue though: couldn't I just make a switch for the order of the pedals? Or isn't that worth the trouble?

[Mark Hammer]

one thing though: i don't know if you're familiar with the GR, but i feel it's absolutely NOT an octave up fuzz. Actually it is rather clean-ish when playing single strings and breaks up nice'n ringmodish with more strings. Lots of bass frequencies when the ringmod effect kicks in! As usual, this works best in higher frets...

Glad we're on the same page.
The Green Ringer IS an octave-up fuzz, but it doesn't behave much like one until the input signal gets hot enough.  On mine I have a little one-transistor booster stage in the front, with a 3-position toggle for low/med/high drive.  The octaving effect is one of those things you have to know about in advance in order to be able to hear when drive is low, but becomes more obvious in the med and high drive settings.  For me, that argues for FF->GR if one is contemplating using both.

And just for clarification, ALL octave-up fuzzes produce those wacky sideband byproducts that make them sound like ring modulators.  YOu'll get it from the GR, the Superfuzz, the Fender Blender, the Foxx Tone Machine, the Mayer and Tychobrahe Octavias, et al.  Any octave-up unit that emplys phase-splitting will do it.  And as you are probably aware, they do it most on double-stop bends.  You'll be sitting there bending a note upwards, and wondering why the hell it sounds like its going downwards.  They're all like that.

[drewl]

I've built a couple pedals with a distortion and Green Ringer combined.

One is an MXR Distortion plus/Green Ringer, and the other a Fuzz face/Ringer. You can switch in either of the two effects or both with seperate level controls so you can limit the signal hitting the ringer.
It really sounds good hitting the GR with a nice boosted signal.

[Mark Hammer]

I've made a few units with a Dist+ feeding a Scrambler, and have nothing but good things to say about that combination.  The thing is that few octave-up fuzzes come with any capability of "preconditioning" the signal for optimum octave-generation.  Having a front end that can accomplish that preconditioning can produce a more desirable outcome, as well as a bunch of audio sillilness to satisfy that side of yourself.  I might also add that a distortion circuit, ahead of the octave-up circuit, will introduce considerable compression of the signal.  What this means is that you can essentially make the octave last longer, because the distortion/clipping circuit holds the signal above the threshold for generating the octave for a longer portion of the note's lifespan.

One thing I will recommend is having some means of feeding the octave-up unit - whatever it happens to be - a "rounder" signal with a lot of the harmonic content removed.  Harmonics of harmonics, and especially sideband products of harmonics, is not particularly attractive.  Perhaps equally important, the octave can get get lost in all that surplus harmonic content, and the very reason for wanting to use an octave-up circuit is botched.  Doesn't mean the distortion signal HAS to be muted or dull all the time, but you want to keep that capability available for making the "enhanced" octave generation work according to plan.

[Shawbrook]

I just got another idea: what about I add a switchable feedback loop to the Fuzz Factory? 

[Mark Hammer]

From where to where?

[Shawbrook]

From the pedal into itself? Or maybe a feedback loop where you can put another pedal in that goes into the fuzz factory again? I'm just speculating.

[Juicy_scooby]

Hey guys I know this thread is very old but maybe someone will reply to this...

I'm looking into building a triple FF, GR, and SHO combo and am trying to figure out the best way to order them without some complex switching scheme.

This thread is awesome, but I wanted to clarify a few things...

I've seen schems (i.e. the Tychobrae Octavia) that put the octave up after the fuzz and sell 'em like this. I'm guessing this works in these because the GR is a bit more finnicky with its octaving/adding extra harmonics as opposed to maybe a cleaner octave circuit? Is this a fair assessment?

To follow on that, I understand octaves like the Green Ringer benefit from having a bit of compression, ampage, or boost to improve it's tracking and sustain, and I understand that (like above) making that gain increase a harmonically rich fuzz isn't necessarily the best for it...so, if I want a clean somewhat improved signal to be hitting the GR, my thought is to put the Super Hard On Boost in front of it, and then put the Fuzz Face after it, just like bikini-inspector mentioned in this ordering below.

(a pretty goofy one-taker recorded a while ago with SHO+GR -> sodameiser -> hydrosis fuzz -> another sodameiser  -> fender frontman into 4x10" bass cab: http://soundcloud.com/shiz-cake/output-2. To those who understand the lyrics: please don't listen )

in my view, octave up into fuzz seems to be a rather common way of doing it (eg. jack white, josh homme....), so the sho+gr (i call it the co.ck ring ) box is first in my effects chain (sho is a nice buffer, too).

fuzz into gr did not ever sound as musical imho...but i don't have a fuzz face or Ffactory, so maybe that's different.

I'd wire all three together in True Bypass and ad the nulling mod to the GR so I think I'd have enough control to not smash any given part of that circuit and give the GR what it needs.

Additionally, if I have a transparent OD (the Soul Food to be exact) that I'd like to keep the drive way down on as an "always-on" kind of sparkle, that would probably do well behind all three ( boost+OD=damn, GR+OD=Sick, Fuzz+OD = holy shit)
BUT could it also work before everything, and potentially as an alternative to putting a boost ahead of the Green Ringer, and saving the SHO for last for the fattest leads?

I know there's a ton of different ways to do this and it's all up to your ear, but any further insight into what each circuit performs and especially your opinions and experience would be awesome to hear.

Thanks for your help guys!!