I just finished a mudbunny build but I can't seem to hear a difference in the mid control? I've subbed a 20kb pot for a 25kb. I was wondering if a 50kb would made the mid range boost more noticable? ???
I've made a few with a mid pot- and it seems very subtle, and also slightly dependent on where the gain and tone control are. I like the option, but it is IMHO extremely subtle.
I was looking at the tone stack calculator.
http://www.duncanamps.com/tsc/
I think I'll change some cap and resistor values and see what I come up with.
Otherwise, the pedal works fine, I used bc549c trannies, tremendous amount of gain, I used the violet ram's head variation. It's definitely going onto the pedal board.
I also borrowed a signal generator from my brother in-law, I'm going to put it on a scope.
Quote from: FredGarvin on May 16, 2011, 11:56:34 PM
I was looking at the tone stack calculator.
http://www.duncanamps.com/tsc/
I think I'll change some cap and resistor values and see what I come up with.
Otherwise, the pedal works fine, I used bc549c trannies, tremendous amount of gain, I used the violet ram's head variation. It's definitely going onto the pedal board.
I also borrowed a signal generator from my brother in-law, I'm going to put it on a scope.
I made some changes to resistor values and got some great results. I got a huge sweep from scooped to flat. I'll check my values and report back.
Thanks cjkbug. I'm very interested to know what values you used. :)
Quote from: FredGarvin on May 17, 2011, 07:53:15 PM
Thanks cjkbug. I'm very interested to know what values you used. :)
I'm interested too. No way my Mudbunny build can be without a presence/mids knob!
i used a b20k pot and subbed in a 12k resistor at r 18. much more sweep.
Ok, after some experimenting with the Tone Stack calculator I finally came up with something I wanted. I replaced four parts in total, R18 to 1k5, R19 to 47k, C10 to 22nf, and C11 to 5.6nf. Now the sweep is dramatic, from a scoop all the way to a huge mid boost. When you crank the tone and mid up all the way up it enters a tonebender sound after you turn the sustain down. Very dramatic change. I like it.
Cool! Thanks for posting your results. I've been posting my findings on this thread. ;D http://www.madbeanpedals.com/forum/index.php?topic=1922.0
I followed Jack Orman's mod suggestions and mine are very similar to yours. I used 3.3K for R18 and changed C10 to 22nf. I didnt experiment with the other side of the tone section but I'll try those values next time I build one!
I get a huge dramatic change too now. With the knob down it almost cuts the signal and up its a nice big mids boost. I found that the mids knob only works well from the middle of the tone knob to the treble side. Did changing those other values help it affect the bass side of the tone knob sweep?
I too like it :)
Quote from: FredGarvin on June 05, 2011, 07:34:52 PM
Ok, after some experimenting with the Tone Stack calculator I finally came up with something I wanted. I replaced four parts in total, R18 to 1k5, R19 to 47k, C10 to 22nf, and C11 to 5.6nf. Now the sweep is dramatic, from a scoop all the way to a huge mid boost. When you crank the tone and mid up all the way up it enters a tonebender sound after you turn the sustain down. Very dramatic change. I like it.
muff to tone bender? I think I like the sound of that. I'm tying these mods out on my next gruntbox build
When the mid control is down at the minimum value I have a mid scoop that lowers the output a bit. When I turn the mid control up, I find that most of the sweep is in the first quarter of the pot, after that the mid boost overpowers the bottom end. I'll have to post some sound bites in order to point out how drastic it is.
Quote from: FredGarvin on June 05, 2011, 11:16:03 PM
When the mid control is down at the minimum value I have a mid scoop that lowers the output a bit. When I turn the mid control up, I find that most of the sweep is in the first quarter of the pot, after that the mid boost overpowers the bottom end. I'll have to post some sound bites in order to point out how drastic it is.
that sounds exactly like what mine does!! i'll have to try what you said to get that tonebender sound.
I was over at a friends place the other night and he wanted to see the differences between my Tiny Terror and his Blackstar HT-5RH through a 4x12. Actually I found them to sound quite similar if you play with the tone knobs, but, that's something else. I had also brought over the mudbunny I have currently modded, we played around with it for an hour or so and were able to mimic some Led Zep, Beatles, ZZtop, old Black Sabbath tones, it goes on an on. I was actually quite surprised. Out of all the projects I completed and brought over for him to demo, he liked this current mudbunny project the best. It was a great compliment as he is a 30 year plus and going active gigging artist.
Thats sound awesome! What version did you build your mudbunny too?
Violet ram's head variation. I didn't use the same diodes as specified though, I used a bunch of silicon diodes that biased around 500 or so, I don't know what the hell they are, they look like rectifier diodes marked as A-23 233 002 in green (military grade?). Anyway, it sounds good with them anyway. here's some gut shots, she's still a work in progress but I like it the best out of all my Big Muffs.
http://users.eastlink.ca/~aszwec/pics/muff1.jpg (http://users.eastlink.ca/~aszwec/pics/muff1.jpg)
http://users.eastlink.ca/~aszwec/pics/muff2.jpg (http://users.eastlink.ca/~aszwec/pics/muff2.jpg)
http://users.eastlink.ca/~aszwec/pics/muff3.jpg (http://users.eastlink.ca/~aszwec/pics/muff3.jpg)
are those ceramic caps? I got a bunch of large value ceramics for muffs, but haven't tried them yet.
I think they're polyester. I don't use ceramic. And I don't use those huge 250v-500v polyesters either, or WIMA type. I basically just use what I have kicking around. The Big Muff with Tone Wicker has SMD, so, size doesn't matter. I know there might be some that beg to differ.
Looks great! The one I'm playing around with is the Violet Rams Head version which is probably the same one your talking about. Are you referring to the diodes forward bias being 500 mV which would be .5V? Thats great that your using military grade components. I hope to join you one day with that.
The caps your using I believe are Monolithic Ceramic Capacitors which I've always though a higher quality ceramic disk, but that might not be true :) -> http://cdn2.iofferphoto.com/img/item/169/323/674/heHf.jpg
I huge box of components that my school was throwing away and there was a bunch of 1UF and .01 uf monolith caps in there. They work great and I noticed that what frequency central uses also!!
I would like to build a muff using all ceramic disk (yes the bigger ones that 250V+) cause supposedly thats what they originally used. I'm curious if there is actually a difference sonically but I grabbed a bunch of ceramic disk caps from Tayda to give it a try. I think the point is your pedal shouldn't sound bad because you didn't use the highest quality components, just grab what you got and go for it like you said!
When you said your muff reminds you of a tonebender it makes sense because they have a similiar schematic topology. I think I misunderstood what you were saying before though. With the mod it sounds like a tonebender but it doesn't really act like one right?
Quote from: cjkbug on June 06, 2011, 05:50:53 AM
are those ceramic caps? I got a bunch of large value ceramics for muffs, but haven't tried them yet.
You should try it!
I don't use ceramics because I heard they were noisy. The caps could be Monolithic, hard to tell? I bought a bunch of parts from a guy on ebay and it had tons of parts, it took me 3 hours to sort it. Funny you mention Tayda, I've bought lots of stuff from them, great prices and free shipping. This is my second Muff build, my first is a copy of a Ram's head V2 using a Pigeon Fx pcb housed in an original re-issue muff pi housing. It's a monster too. I used the following layout of a pcb from kitraes site, I subbed in the parts as shown in the image, except I used BC547C for the trannies and it turned out nice. I don't really understand what you're saying about act like one (tonebender)? What I'm saying that it's basically two pedals in one now because of the change.
http://users.eastlink.ca/~aszwec/pics/V2_WITH_'73_POTS_FS36999.jpg (http://users.eastlink.ca/~aszwec/pics/V2_WITH_'73_POTS_FS36999.jpg)
Here are images of the finished product:
http://users.eastlink.ca/~aszwec/pics/MuffPi1.jpg (http://users.eastlink.ca/~aszwec/pics/MuffPi1.jpg)
http://users.eastlink.ca/~aszwec/pics/MuffPi2.jpg (http://users.eastlink.ca/~aszwec/pics/MuffPi2.jpg)
http://users.eastlink.ca/~aszwec/pics/MuffPi3.jpg (http://users.eastlink.ca/~aszwec/pics/MuffPi3.jpg)
http://users.eastlink.ca/~aszwec/pics/MuffPi4.jpg (http://users.eastlink.ca/~aszwec/pics/MuffPi4.jpg)
http://users.eastlink.ca/~aszwec/pics/MuffPi5.jpg (http://users.eastlink.ca/~aszwec/pics/MuffPi5.jpg)
http://users.eastlink.ca/~aszwec/pics/MuffPi6.jpg (http://users.eastlink.ca/~aszwec/pics/MuffPi6.jpg)
Update: After looking over the caps I used for the build I would have to say 'yes' I do use ceramic caps, monolithic type. They must be, they are definately not polyester, those little ones. Thanks for noting that.
Your probably right about ceramics with a high tolerance being noisy. The first muff I built was a rams head also, and then moved to the violet version. Your first build looks great especially in the newer chassis. I bet that totally fools people. ;D
The muff i was experimenting on is now finished. Ill post it in the finished section when i get a chance. I really like the mids knob as an addition!
Quote from: bigmufffuzzwizz on June 06, 2011, 03:22:49 PM
Looks great! The one I'm playing around with is the Violet Rams Head version which is probably the same one your talking about. Are you referring to the diodes forward bias being 500 mV which would be .5V? Thats great that your using military grade components. I hope to join you one day with that.
The caps your using I believe are Monolithic Ceramic Capacitors which I've always though a higher quality ceramic disk, but that might not be true :) -> http://cdn2.iofferphoto.com/img/item/169/323/674/heHf.jpg
I huge box of components that my school was throwing away and there was a bunch of 1UF and .01 uf monolith caps in there. They work great and I noticed that what frequency central uses also!!
I would like to build a muff using all ceramic disk (yes the bigger ones that 250V+) cause supposedly thats what they originally used. I'm curious if there is actually a difference sonically but I grabbed a bunch of ceramic disk caps from Tayda to give it a try. I think the point is your pedal shouldn't sound bad because you didn't use the highest quality components, just grab what you got and go for it like you said!
When you said your muff reminds you of a tonebender it makes sense because they have a similiar schematic topology. I think I misunderstood what you were saying before though. With the mod it sounds like a tonebender but it doesn't really act like one right?
Quote from: cjkbug on June 06, 2011, 05:50:53 AM
are those ceramic caps? I got a bunch of large value ceramics for muffs, but haven't tried them yet.
You should try it!
skreddy swears by those big ceramics in his muffs
Large ceramics, as in those disc shaped ones, cjkbug? I don't have any big ones just tiny stuff, and I didn't have the proper values, so, I used those monolithic ceramics. :-\
bigmufffuzzwizz, it does fool people until they reach for the tone knob, it's backwards just like a ram's head muff from the 70's. :P
Post pictures of your builds, I'm interested to see them. ;D