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Just wanted to give a heads up and nod to my buddy Curt who makes these mini, roller volume and expression pedals. I thought some of you guys might find them useful. No affiliation except friendship (no, I don't get a commission).

http://www.classicaudiofx.com/

While I was sorting my baggie of purchased and unstuffed PCBs so I could print out the doc in preparation for the builds, I came across a "Timmy V1.1 3/13" PCB and I don't remember where I got it from. If anyone knows and/or has the build doc, please send me a PM. Thanks!

I had built a Yellow Shark a while back, but wasn't overly impressed with it, which was odd as I really like my (purchased) SHOD, and the two are, or should be, fairly similar. I put the YS on the shelf and relegated it to the "oh well, they can't all be home runs" category, but in the back of my mind it still bothered me that it sounded so "meh". I had seen a note somewhere about increasing C5 by a factor of 10x, and that helped brighten it up a bit at the extreme of the nature setting, but the overdrive character was still kind of boring and lackluster. There it sat again until my frustration level rose enough to dive back in to the circuit. After looking at a few drawings for the HBOD on the net, and comparing them to the YS, and also looking at the SHOD and the Model H, I noticed a few differences. R9 in the YS was 47k, whereas in the others was 147k or 150k. Also, C5 was originally 4n7 in the YS, but 220n in the others. Time to heat up the iron.

Well, I didn't see the heavens part or hear angel choirs singing, but the changes did make the pedal useable. The low end is still a bit fizzy, and everything is a fizzy mess with the gain above 1 or 2 o'clock, but between 10 and noon on the drive dial, there's a nice crunch. The Nature knob is much more useable now, except at the extremes, which I can live with. Plenty of volume for driving an already cooking amp, or stacking into another pedal, and perhaps that's where this pedal best lives. At least, that's what I've read about it. I have to say, though, I still prefer my SHOD as it acts better as a drive channel for a clean amp, which is how I run my setup.

I bought the kit from Weber a couple of months ago when they were running their sale. I wanted something easier to transport, and that would take pedals well. Playing in church, I don't need a ton of volume, so a Princeton Reverb seemed about right. This one is the high-power version with 6L6s and a 12" speaker, and a slightly larger cab for more bottom. I put a master volume on the back so I can get a little preamp crunch at lower levels. I had my buddy with the vinyl cutter do the logo. OLDHOUSE is kind of my brand I suppose. Anyway, enough chat, here's the pics:

A couple of vero board Klone builds. They sound good, but not quite as good as my Sunking. That pedal is magical.

As most know, the 3rd stage of the CC is different from the Recto on which it's based. The cathode resistor in the Recto is 39k. When using that value in the CC, the trimmer cannot be turned down enough to bias the stage correctly. However, if you change the trimmer T3 to 500k, you can use 39k for R9 and get the stage to bias correctly. This also reduces the gain and tendency of the circuit to squeal from instability.

Hey guys (and gals), if you find the Aristocrat to be a bit bass-shy, try increasing C4 and C15 from the stock 10n to 22n or higher. I went with 47n in mine and it worked great. Increase them just enough to get some bass back, too high and you'll get flub.

I'm done stuffing the board for my Chunk Chunk and had a question about the source resistor for Q3. It's spec'd at 3k9 (and that's what I put in there), but the original Boogie (and SLO from whence it was derived) has 39k as the cathode resistor for that stage. I've done a cursory search at Gaussmarkov's site and at DIYstompboxes, but couldn't find any pertinent info why the value was reduced by a factor of 10. I was wondering if any has tried using a different value there. Seems like a larger value would help reduce the gain and consequent squealing that often accompanies these builds. I know you can't directly compare FET and tube circuits, but I did read one post where 39k was sub'd for 3k9 and it helped with stability.

With help from Brian, deciphering the diagram and mods, I was able to complete a veroboard version of the Os Mutantes Fuzz. I had to make a few component value tweaks to the mods and it was good to go.





Original thread here

Brian et al,

Where do you buy your stripboard? Seems like there's plenty of places in the UK, but not much to chose from in the US. I know DIYstompboxes has that one board size, but I was looking for something a bit smaller.

Hey Brian, (or anyone else), the engineer at my studio has asked me to build him a fuzz based on the one used by Os Mutantes way back in the day. There's a blurry scan of a schematic from a magazine article floating around out there, so I can build a stock one. There are also some mods in the article, but the text isn't clear enough to read, and it's not in English besides. There's an outfit from South America selling a version of this fuzz on eBay, but at $180, it's more than my buddy wanted to spend.

Does anyone have any more information on this fuzz, particularly the mods? (Brian, if this is in the wrong section, please move it to the correct one).

Brian, I mentioned this in a tech help thread on the Quasar (RC Booster), but if you could find a way to insert the filter comprised of the 10k resistor and 0.1uF cap before the Bax stack, you could offer this board as either an RC or AC Booster. Here's a link to the site showing the schematic for the AC Booster:

http://revolutiondeux.blogspot.com/2008/06/xotic-rcac-booster-overdrive.html

Best regards,

Scott

Get rid of the jfet switching and some of the buffers, convert it to true bypass, and this would make a nice project.