Tighten Up A Tonebender?

[frankie5fingers]

Hello Everyone.  Finished an MB Pastyface to Tenebender spec.  I used OC76's  68, 70 and 92.  Sounds great but I'd like to tighten it up a little, and make the attack a bit harder - toward the OD side vs fuzz.   I had a couple of thought, what say you all?
Thanks

[newfish]

I've used a pair of anti-parallel diodes in parallel with the 100K feedback resister (Q3E to Q2B).

It does tighten the fuzz up, but not so much that you lose the Tonebender's character.

Hope this helps.

[seedlings]

Input cap blend helps to dial in how much mushy lows come through.  This worked well for me on a Univox Unidrive.



CHAD

[joegagan]

haven't tried it exactly in this circ. but i have done similar with a FF circ and added 3rd gainstage. try adding diodes to ground(after last trans) and upping the overall out volume to make up the gain loss.

[Kesh]

you could try a cap from collector to base on Q3, a few hundred pico. takes the fizz off a little. you could also sub a 10K preset for Q3's collector resistor and play with putting it off bias.

these are standard fuzz face tricks, and the tonebender is just a fuzz face with an extra transistor stage at the input.

[Electric Warrior]

No, this is about a MKIII/IV clone and even in a MKII a trim pot on Q3's collector is rather pointless.

Use a transistor (base and emitter) instead of a diode. that sure mellowed it out quite a bit for me. You also should try different transistors, too, especially for q3. Try different hfes and leakages unitl you find what you're looking for. This version of the Tone Bender sure can get very overdrivey, listen to this one:

[pinkjimiphoton]

another option is to make it a hybrid, use a silicon and ground the emitter directly. i did that in my toneblaster hybrid tonebender, and it made it really come to life with a nice edge...
can get everything from a cleaner classic kinda compressed overdrive on to typical tonebender, and real close to big muff character.

here's the stupid pedal trick for it:

schematic's around the forum somewhere...