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Not boutique, not vintage, and not rare (at all), but I wanted to share.



Never cared much about the ultra-popular DS1, because it is too popular to be cool, honestly. But this one was too cheap to pass on, second hand (it looks new, though), and I thought the remote control for "channel switching" was a cool feature too.

Cranking my Orange Dual Terror with this in normal setting in front sounds great indeed, you have heard that sound in so many records it's hard not to dig it. The Turbo option gets you a good lead tone, too.

Got me thinking, why do I bother searching the perfect tone, warmth, versatility, transparency or whatever, when I can get a couple cheap BOSS pedals and rock them loud... I play in pubs, who will hear the difference?. And of course there's no way you can break this pedal, no matter how hard or drunk you stomp on them!!

 

Not much, but it's an amp, and it's new for me...
Bought it as an emergency amp, and had the opportunity to test it yesterday. Very nice considering what it is, played with a triangle muff with mids,  very useable and powerful rock tone.
And it's loud. 20 watts in a pocket.

The madbeanpedals Tonebender, very nice, easy and fast build, inexpensive, and sounds great. The fuzz pot has a wide range from quite clean to fully fuzzy and cleans up nicely with guitar volume. Makes me think why bother with the germanium stuff, this is a great fuzz.

Is there a name for this disease? I mean, when you can't stop building and loving every Big Muff variant that crosses your path?


This one's built around Rullywow's King Tut pcb, smooth build and I'm very happy how it turned out, love the color and the final look.


When I made a fast test of the build prior to boxing, I wasn't impressed, honestly, "I can still sell it or trade it or something", I thought. But then yesterday, when I made the final test, plugged to an amp... I could not stop riffing!! I think part of the secret is the huge output, that pushes the amp and makes it sing... The clipping and input options are good to tweak the perfect tone for each riff, and well, I have riff for a couple new songs now. Another keeper.


I took the pics with the phone, so sorry if they are a little low quality...

   

OMG OMG OMG OMG

You never got enough muff, do you? This is my last run, with 3 very different tastes:

Russian: Built in a JMK Scuba board, I'm loving this one, is so sweet sounding, I was a little surprised at first, because is noticeably less gainy than other versions, but is so musical, has a lot of clarity, I understand now why this version is so well regarded. I'm going to play this one a lot.

Bermuda: Mudbunny board and triangle era circuit. No surprises here, thick, meaty, creamy muff. Must.

IC Muff: JMK's Operational Muff board. This one's a beast, the wildest from them all, it's still surprising that they manage to keep the muff flavor with such a different circuit, but is clearly different from the rest, lots of gain and volume, still a great range available from the tone and sustain knobs.

Also, in my workbench there's a Jumbo tonebender and a Pharaoh almost ready to box. Most people would think there's something wrong with me. I know you guys get my point. Love you.

A Telecaster, at last! I've wanted a Tele for a long time and was in need of a single coil guitar (didn't own one since maybe 2 years), so this happened.

I got this model because: 1. It's in my price range, 2. Looks great (to me), 3 . The reviews were great. Got it 2nd hand, but it was in great condition, I think I've already done more scratches these days than the previous owner.
It feels sturdy and durable (it's a Tele, no surprise here), the neck is very comfortable, the hardware is ok, and the sound is what I was looking for, not much experience with single coils or teles to judge how good or bad they are. Will keep it stock for some time. I don't think there's nothing to add about a Telecaster, and how right fender got the design in the first place, so 60 years latter it's still attractive...

So far the biggest surprise is the neck pick up, I knew what to expect from the bridge, but I'm loving the neck for blues leads and it's great for rhythm too. This guitar and my recently added Russian spec big muff is my favorite tone these days.

Well, maybe not very vintage, but whatever. I got a Colorsound wah (sweeeet sound) that had only battery option. I drilled an added jack for external 9v supply. With some power supplies I get an annoying  "wweeeeeeeee" in a certain pedal position.
I realized the pedal has no power filtering (as it was only intended for batteries), so I thought I could add a little board with a filter.
Does that make sense?

I think a 100u electrolytic cap and maybe a polarity protection diode. Enough? Or should I add something extra?

Thanks guys!

Enviado desde mi HTC One SV mediante Tapatalk

This is Aion's PCB for the Maxon OD820. Stunning overdrive, often compared to the Klon Centaur, yes it's the same kind of overdrive, to my ears it has a flatter fq response sounds less mids focused than the centaur and respects more the original sound of the rest of the rig. Which is better? Both are great and different enough so you want to have both.

First post with embebed pics, by the way!

Here's my Kingslayer, not much new to say here, this is one of the best overdrives you can build.

I got frightened when I think about a 1590A, I panic so much that I run the opposite way. I ran until I reached a 125B box from an old project that was waiting for recycling.

The project itself was lying around my desk for a long time, because (honestly) I didn't expect it to sound this good. I finally put it together I was surprised how much I liked it, dark and somewhat lo-fi. A delay addiction is growing on me...

This one built to the HOHNER Tri DIRTY BOOSTER specs. Very good sounding, aggressive, sweet, juicy, dirty . You always enjoy a new flavor of muff.

Am I the only one who was THRRRRILLLEEDD to see this forecasted for May in the project list?

My take on the Egodriver OCD, not much to comment. Problem free build as always.
A great overdrive/distortion, with a broad range of sounds. Everything that it promises is there. To be honest the character of the distortion is somewhat tame and elegant (sounds very pro, indeed), but it lacks wildness for my tastes, not a bad thing and I understand how this can be so well rated by many players, but I was not as thrilled as I am with other stuff.
Still feels like a very useable tool so I will keep it, I think I will end up using it more than expected.

Hi,

I'm in the process of biasing and adjusting the effect and I'm having 2 noise issues.
1-   In certain Range and Rate combinations, Range between 2 and 4 o'clock AND Rate between 11 and 1 more or less, there's a clearly audible POP-POP (2 pops!) every few seconds, the distance between them varies with the Rate, so I think this has something to do with the clock signal getting into the audio signal. You can clearly hear it even when you are playing, so is something I need to fix.
2-   When I'm not playing there's some background noise, like picking distant radio signals, not audible when playing and wonder if it is maybe normal or not.

Any tips to fix that?

Apart from that, the effect is working and I'm getting pretty sweet sounds from it, so I guess I'm close to finishing it.

Thanks guys,

My take in a true classic, I'm not confident enough to try white labels on a black box, so I went the opposite and built this white RAT.

The diodes are a pair of 1N4148 and a pair of 1N60P. LEDs also sounded great, but 1N60s won the contest.

Nothing new I can say about the sound, I love the mean and dirty distortion it delivers. You like it or not, but there's nothing like a RAT. Love to have an extra clipping option. The sweep control is good to tame the beast and expand the usability, but to be honest I use it down most of the time, I like it raw.

Great project and PCB if you want to take the RAT path.

Another great drive/distortion project. As the circuit itself and the build doc suggest this pedal is close to the distortion + in sound, thus I named it as my project D+ "Mustard".
What I like (compared to a D+) is that you can get more dirt with the gain maxed and it has some fuzz-like sound, so you can go from soft drive to dirty distortion, and with extra flexibility of a tone control.
For the diodes I choose 1N34As (stock) and 1N4148s, that give different distortion, less volume and more fuzz appeal with the germanium and more "standard" drive with the silicons, I also used a little bit of the "softness" trimmer with the 1N4148s, that gives extra headroom and openness to the sound. I think it's a great feature so you can have 2 very different clipping options, that give you variety.

Good old tubescreamer... that's what I say when I play through this thing. I ordered a green bean to replace my old DIY TS that was a little crappy and not reliable enough (one of my first builds years ago!).

The build was smooth and issue free, I tried several clipping diodes and ended up with a standard setup  (1N4148s) for the first pair and LEDS for the other, which sound amazing. I also implemented the "bright" switch, but not the "fat", as I felt it wasn't giving me enough juice for an extra switch.

It seems that the hype on the TS808 is gone today, it feels like boring, old fashioned and mojo-lacking against other drives. But hell, this new build has reminded me that hype is hype and tone is tone, and the TS still does the job as brilliantly as always did. The extra bean options just give you more power. As fricking good as all the unicorns, dragons and minotaurs out there.

The paint, of course, had to be green.

Here's my Zero Point DD. I'm impressed.

Delay is not an effect I use every day, and I already had two delays, but still I felt like building something from the Zero Point family. I don't use modulation in the delay usually so I though DD was for me, with just the minimum controls for a delay.
When I tested the thing it blew my mind. Sounds awesome. Compared to a EHX Memory Boy it has less brightness, as I would expect from a tape delay, never played a one myself, but it makes sense in my mind. The extended delay time allows for real space madness, and I can be hours literally playing and making sounds with it. Like diving in a Black Hole, thus the name. Love it.

I decide to use a BB box because 1- I'm not comfortable with tight builds and 2- I like how that EHX style layout looks. Still I was stupid enough to make the 9V jack hole in the wrong place, so I needed to use a low profile one, but apart from that annoying detail  I'm quite happy. I don't know how you guys are able to build anything in a 1590A.

About the pcb: great sounding, pain free, no issue, straight forward build. Madbean is my hero.
I will probably go for the cave dweller next.

Another Big Muff clone, this one built around a aion pcb and with mids control.
I wanted to try this mod, and see if it really helps to have more presence in a live mix, which certainly does. No more disappearing in the mix when you stomp on a big muff, I think it's a great feature to have, specially if you play in a 2 guitar band. Not my case currently, but still feel the difference.
Does it kill the character of the muff? Not as much as I expected when you play alone, and with the band not at all I would say, you hear a muff. So has replaced my beloved ramhead in the board I use with my band!.

The next one I will build is a Green Russian.