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  The holy grail of overdrives! Seriously this thing sounds incredible, my new favorite. It is just different in a very good way. Instead of getting full out crunchy when you dig in it get's fuzzy, but not that mushy fuzzy, a good defined, thick fuzz. Build this pedal!



Stripboard always comes out messier for some reason.

Sorry, I am not much of a rhythm player 

I just picked one of these up used and my first impressions are not good. The fuzz has this horrid fizzle to it even at the earliest signs of breakup. To dial this out you must crank up the bass/mids and dial the treble way back. Then in "flame" mode you are constantly left with this woofy mid range that you just cannot get rid of. Gain pot goes from really really clean to very saturated in no time at all and the EQ has to be constantly adjusted to get a good balance at different levels of gain. All these problems seem to become amplified at higher voltages. The good thing is that when you get it in a sweet spot it is really outstanding.

It may have one or two useful tones but for the most part... meh  . Sounds better with higher output pickups. I don't know why everyone is saying it is so versatile. I am going to build me a screwdriver and compare (then probably flip the Catalyst). Anyone else have/played this pedal and liked it? Maybe I am using it wrong.

Anyone else think that the Fuzz Factory is just too thin and harsh sounding? I did the capacitor replacements and it added bit to the lower registers, but I find it still has too much treble and grittiness to it. Is it just my amp/guitars or can I really not pull a decent germanium fuzz tone from this thing. 

Made a Keeley Fuzzhead layout today and had the Formula 5 from while back. Fuzzhead isn't as good as it could be but DIY LC isn't very friendly to circuit changes. Both are unverified and electrolytic caps aren't necessarily pointing in the correct direction.


Formula 5


FuzzHead

Seeing if there is any interest in compression other than the orange squeezer? I've heard it is a good, subtle compression but I am always a little wary of one-knob wonders. I was hoping for something optical based. There is quite a bit of product out there based on the dyna/ross design. My vote would be for the Pigtronix Philosophers Tone. Looks like a semi verified schematic will be done in a few days from FSB, I'd try and make a board but the layout is dual sided. Other ideas could be the compulator or the Diamond comp.

Pigtronix PGS Demo

FSB Thread
http://www.freestompboxes.org/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=11954&start=40

I know I just posted a request but I was playing around with my Les Lius clone today and let me say that this thing is awesome. This is one of my top five favorite overdrives and everyone I've let play it says they want one. It is astonishingly simple; just a single transistor and a few diode choices. I made mine on perf board but you could probably make it on a road rage sized PCB. Very tweed like bottom end and it gets creamy grit when you switch in the second stage.

Here is my horrible attempt at a video. The sound quality doesn't do it justice.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2GBFnpM4VdQ

I have been getting a lot of interest in some of the old Mutron stuff. Specifically the filter (available from GGG) and the Biphase.

Schematics for the biphase are available and it looks like two mutron phase II's in one box with a slightly different oscillator section. It would definitely be a beast of a project. There are 4 custom LED/LDR's (1 LED to 3 LDR's each). The power section can be made easily without a transformer and the vactrol switching can be replaced with hard switches. Footswitch and expression pedal circuitry can be removed. Overall it might be do-able and from reading around there would be quite a high demand for a project like this.

Has anyone ordered the NOS germanium transistors from pedal parts plus? I am wondering what kind of gain ranges you receive. I usually get my germs from small bear but he is running real low on a lot of the gain matched pairs.

These are for two Zombii builds, do the gains really matter that much? The germanium section looks similar to a fuzz face where correct gains are pretty important.

Etched my first couple of boards today. I am having difficulty getting to the final mask stage just before the etchant bath. I am using heavy stock, glossy photopaper from the laser printer at Kinko's. After very, very hot ironing and soaking for an hour or so i peel off the first couple layers of paper. My problem is removing the material between the traces, I use a toothbrush and a hobby razor but I either end up marring the traces or brushing things too far down. This stuff is tough to remove, any advice to get it off easier?

We were discussing this over in the requests section a couple of weeks back and I had an interesting idea for how to make one of these. I have purchased a pic programmer and have begun to modify the code to make this work, I have been getting a little help from Tom (the original programmer) as well as Chris Safi over at DIY stompboxes. I was wondering if anyone would be interested in this when I finally get it finished? I am about halfway through the program modification and testing, so far all of the device fundamentals are there. It is finals week so I cannot finish it for a few more weeks, but I plan on making a full working prototype over the Christmas holiday and maybe some accompanying youtube videos (if I can get the code to work). I have already made a layout in Eagle just to see how it would look and it is pretty complicated, I am not the best layout creator so I might need some help with that. 

I want to build a few of these in little boxes for my Faultline and my Fulldrive. I want to know, if i hooked up my onespot (or some other simple 2.1mm psup) to a single board and wired several output plugs in parallel, how many pedals could I power with just one Road Rage? It seems to me there is going to be some current limiting factor in the charge pump or voltage regulator. I am only trying to power two pedals at the moment but the added plugs could be useful in the future.