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A Boomerang cocked wah into a 71' Triangle muff into a K200B distortion.

Very interesting effect this, plus one of my favourite decals to date.

A Yorkshire Echo (Deux Profundis), into a bit of an experiment, a switchable 2/4 stage ROG Tri-Vibe built on a pair of Fuzzdog PCBs.

Grind Customs Ultra78, which is an ICBM with the tone bits from an Ultrastoner essentially. A surprisingly versitile thing!

The Burn-o-Tron Mk1. Not my tidiest build... Which is a bit of an understatement. I bludgeoned the hole for the display into the case. I HATE cutting square holes. As you can tell from the scratches and the gaping hole above it that's hidden with tape. Then there was that f**king display. The single most illogical pile of shit I've ever purchased! Which is why there's no internal shot... It's been wired and re-wired so many f**king times...
Oh and the Daimler badge is there because I had it and it fit.



Anyhow, burning the 7 right now... On the left is how it looks in my clock. On the right is where it'll sit for a couple of hours until I can back it off and it all stays lit. Limits for the IN-18 are 200V 8mA so 170V and 6mA are nicely within that.

More adventures in geekery. I will get around to some pedals shortly I promise!

http://juansolo.co.uk/geekery/retrobrite.html

Lectric FX Zirconia. Much like the others. Comp pot wired backwards so it works forwards, deleted the switch, running at 18V on a charge pump (though not in the pic, because I'd forgotten it at that point, I put it in today).

Pretty much caught up now. The Enchanter is a slightly updated version of the Catch-22. We just removed the switch (you can still add the diodes in your preferred config), reversed one of the pots (it was still backwards) and re-laid it out to what we use as standard.

The Guvnor Tim is a Grind Catch-22 and a Fuzzdog Guvnor clone in a box, for a bloke on TFB in the UK.

[JTB76]

I wasn't going to post this lot until next week as one of the effects is missing and will be done on Weds. But bugger it, I'll just tack it on the end when it's done.

For those that don't follow Cleggy (Marauder) and my exploits on the juansolofx page on facebook, I'll give a brief history lesson.

Earlier on in the year I had a plan, not a very good one, but a plan none the less. It was to make a few pedals, make them small, strong, and easy to build and sell them as something like a standard line. So if someone said to us, can you build me an Muff for example, we'd say, 'why yes' and be able to knock one together nice and easily and sell it to them. We did about 6 pedals (4x muffs, 1x boost and 1x fuzz), I put none copyright infringing artwork on them, which was basically plain, with a funky font. Priced them sensibly and pimped them to the world... We didn't sell one... In fact I gave one away to a friend instead for doing some You Tube vids with us.

So that didn't work. But it kind of set us on a bit of a mission to actually carry on regardless, and create the fictitious line of unwanted pedals. It became quite addictive. As none of the previous ones sold, I also decided that if I'm keeping the buggers, I'm gonna do the decals my way. So we stripped them all down and we've just finished re-decalling them all (well, bar one, as I mentioned). So here they are. Plus a Maestro phaser at the end, because it got caught up in this batch.


I may as well start at the beginning with the JTB76

A friend of ours brought his 1976 Jumbo Tonebender over for us to have a go with, insisting it was the dogs bollocks. Having built things on this circuit before (it's essentially 3/4 of a muff) we were quite dubious about this claim.

Long story short, we f**king loved it. The girth of a muff, but with that fizz of an older Tonebender. But, being mostly the same topology as a muff, none of the hang-ups of an old fuzz when it comes to playing nice with other things. So we took some photos and cloned it. Then found some transistors that were in the correct ranges and had the right sound then back-to-backed it with the original to make sure it was nailed on. It was. On top of this we found that it was also only two components away from being a B&M Fuzz Unit... It'd be rude not to put them in on a switch now wouldn't it?

We collaborated with Rej on this one and the GCFX Supernature was born (Chuckbuick doing the PCB wrangling on this one). This was the effect that planted the seed of the bad idea





Next it had to be muffs. It's kinda our thing, and  you can get a lot of milage out of a single PCB. As Grind had the uber-featured muff covered with the Ultrastoner PCB, we decided to go the other way and simplify. That way we could build each one to it's strengths without making them over complicated. This is something else we've found from talking to people who gig our pedals; they want the thing to be compact and simple. So that's was part of the philosophy we've tried to stick to. Basically it needs to fit into a Camden Boss enclosure (slightly smaller than a 1590B) and not have too many controls. This has caused Jason (Jubal81), the man who's done all the PCB ninjitsu from this point forth, all kinds of headaches with some of the more complicated effects.

So I'll just rattle these off as you know what you're in for here:

Ultrastoner MkIII
Async Ge clipping for ball-shaking sludgy-dooooom





TSM680 MKIII
An aggressive muff with a mid-focus, bordering on distortion. This one uses LED clipping to maintain that hard edge.





71 Triangle
The remaining two muffs are clones of two of our favourite old muffs. Both with the addition of a mids pot to allow it to work better in a band situation. With the mids all the way counter clockwise, the pedal is stock.

This pedal is a clone of a 1971 Triangle muff, and in my opinion is the most 'muffy' sounding of the lot. At least I suspect it's what people are thinking of when they imagine a muff sound.





DGM3
Last but not least is a Violet Ram's Head clone. After a bit of logic, we suspect this is what David Gilmour's number one muff is based on. It would seem to make sense as it works really well for lead playing and is oddly not as great when it comes to chords.

This one has the most effective mid pot of them all. I usually try and leave a little bit of scoop at the top of the range for the pedal to remain sounding muffy. This one I've set to go pretty much flat.





To round out our initial line we put in a booster. Hey it worked for Zvex! So we thought we'd siliconise our baby boobtube. Which worked spectacularly well. Shockingly so that when you back-to-back this with the toob effect, there's bugger all in it.

Big Omar
Capable of being a clean boost into a amp with lots of headroom, or a OD into one that hasn't as much. It also sounds great after fuzzes to thicken them up.

Big Omar is also a fairly well known British porn star, so probably not an idea to Google that one. It was a play on words, Zvex called his noisy old thing a super hard on, ours has a massive knob and is British. It made sense to us.








Part 2 to follow...

Couple of multis for Phil. First up is a Mid-Fi Demo Tape Fuzz clone and a Philosopher's Tone clone (TH Customs PCB) in a box.





Next a Dipthonizer clone on bean's HoneyDripper 2015 board.

Suzy's Tight Club pedal. This was a fun one. We got chatting about doing a Tight Metal and discovered I had a couple of boards left. One thing led to another and I decided that the rudimentary gate on it was a bit pants and it'd be awesome with a real noise gate wedged into the circuit (I'll put details on the site how we've done that).

Anyhow, if that wasn't challenging enough, we also decided to put it in a tiny box, because, well, because. This is a 1590BS... A 1cm taller 1590B!

The pic with the two boards isn't how I ended up wiring it in the end as we needed to move the gate further up the circuit from where the original was. But it's in, it works and it makes it utterly awesome.

Really, really pleased with how this turned out. Decal was Suzy's idea also. Which is cool and I'm using this on mine also (yep, the other board is getting the same treatment for me).

Okko Dominator mk1 clone. I had one of these eons ago that Haberdasher etched for me, it was a giant pedal. I foolishly sold it and missed it greatly. So decided another was needed. Enter Jubal and his PCB wrangling skillz and we have this beauty.

With certain amps this is a high gain weapon. For example, it turns my humble Princeton plus into some sort of ultra metal monster.

Anyhow, I thought in an attempt to get some of the production costs of the PCB back I'd run a once only GB for this. It's here. I'll run the interest thread for a couple of weeks then grab some deposits and get the boards ordered.

One of the first pedals I ever made was the Fuzzy Kitten. Well I came to do the last purge I was planning on selling it. But not only was the outside battered to hell, the inside was proper tangle of wires so I couldn't.

I also couldn't bring myself to bin it so I decided instead to re-house and keep it. The more I thought about it, the more I realised that it's one of those unique things that I really shouldn't part with. So, Cleggy's old Tusk proto box, some green wire and a few hundred pedals later and it looks a bit better

Shitty photo's as the desk lamp has died.





You'll have to imagine the outside of this utterly beaten to hell.

Another unusual build. This is the Obsessive Tone Master... A couple of Matt's pedals re-housed. Which is something I don't normally do, especially a commercial one in there, hence I have no problem sticking an OCD logo on the front.

Anyhow, another green wire special! Signal goes into a Fender tone pot, then a Range Master clone (Mullard-tastic!) into the OCD. He does the BFG thing of running the tone really low, then pulling it back with the treble booster then into the OCD for the distortion. But all in one box and on one stomp.

A Bass multi for 4000mile Phil. Unusual for us as we haven't made many bass pedals.

The signal first hits a Grind Fluff Girl (mildly modded EHX Bass Balls), then into a LectricFX Zirconia (Diamond comp fettled for bass), coming up the rear is Big Omar (our booster).

Works really well, great for getting your Sabbath on.

[Clock of Awesome III and V]

I've been quiet of late as I've been away a bit on holiday and wotnot. Also I've been making some other bits and bobs rather than effects. I thought I'd post them up here as they're relevant to DIY in that they're DIY Nixie clocks.

All the clock kits are from PV Electronics in the UK.

Clock of Awesome III and V
This is one classy clock. It uses the same 'direct drive' as CoA1 and a similar array of features. So it's big, beautiful and silent.

I've made a couple of these. One for myself to replace CoA2, and one for Nick7, another total Nixie whore.

Nick's is on a Bad Nixie trestle stand, mine is in a PV Electronics Stainless Steel case.






Clock of Awesome IV

Interesting one this. Halo nixies are really cheap, seeimingly that's because they're a bit patchy. I've had to buy two sets to get one fully working set out of them. Also this isn't a silent clock like CoA3, but it's not a high pitched whine like CoA2. It's certainly tolerable.

It does look cool as hell though in the flesh. I've got the LEDs turned on because it really looks good on this (might back the levels off a little) and the blinkers off because I'm not as bothered for those. But otherwise, another awesome nixie clock.




Clock of Awesome VI

I just fancied doing something a little different. So this is in PVE's copper-style (actually milled aluminium that's anodised a copper colour) enclosure and the nixes are Telefunken ZM1210.

The nixies are super classy. They have a fine mesh grille unlike the big hex grilles the Russian nixies tend to have. They're also coated orange. The coating can be removed but I thought it went well with the enclosure so decided to leave it on in the end.

Another silent clock. I've got a slight issue with the dimmed night mode, which Pete is looking into. It just might be something the Telefunken's don't like. Which is no bother as I've just disabled that for now.

I'm genuinely shocked and stunned. I expected it to be close, but not to go the way it's gone.

Bit dumbstruck at this and what it might mean for the future.

Cleggy did the board (I wanted nothing to do with this!), I just did the box and dropped it in there. It's actually really rather cool.

Madbean Rustbucket PCB. Not for the feint of heart!






I really liked the decal so shuffled some effects to build this one. It's got my old Jumbo Tonebender from the Fuzzy Kitten in there (the kitten has the ICBM back in there again), and a Big Omar.

Another vault boy (for the same guy). This one's a little smaller with only two effects; a Jumbo Tonebender and a Uglyface+LFO (Machette).

Gary Moore in a Box was the idea.  Marshall Guvnor clone on a Fuzzdog PCB, into a 1776 Rub-a-Dub Reverb into our own Big Omar. Sounds huge and sustains forever. 2nd pedal this week for 4000mile Phil.

A 2nd Maestro PS1a clone in a small box. Again it runs our tweaks to make it play nice with guitar (detailed on the main site).

It might look a bit messy inside but it's all keeping the signal away from everything else. The last one we built we ended up having to shield everything. This one we've got the same result through a bit more sensible routing of wires and jacks (ie, nowhere near the LFO!).

Still a tight fit, and still a bitch to build, but a bloody marvellous phaser.



PS1a board from Alan P. We've just bypassed the AC supply with our own DC supply.