Recycled enclosure, Rabbithole (Green Russian with LEDs in D3-4)

[Willybomb]

Gudday all.  Here's a recycled enclosure a friend gave me to do something interesting with.  It used to be some horrible distortion, so I gutted it and replaced it with a Rabbithole.  After some reading up on the subject populated it to Green Russian specs, with 2n5088s, socketed the diodes and put 3mm red diffused in the 3-4 pair and then boxed it up without even bothering to listen to it.

I'm not sure what a Muff is supposed to sound like, but this isn't some over saturated high gain beast.  I was hoping for, I dunno, more, but this is fairly open in it's sound.  Dare I say it... it's a little Klonish, crossed with a bit of Fuzzface maybe.

It also has a new green indicator LED, because Green Russian.  I can't remember what I painted the box with, maybe rustoleum 2x with a clear coat.  More likely etching primer + 1k clear.  Possibly even just a couple of coats of a black enamel as this has been a pretty lazy build.  Don't know that I'll bother with any artwork.  No real gutshot as it has a top plate that everything mounts onto, that is slid into the baseplate, and then the sides are screwed on to keep everything in place.

Original gutting.


Rabbithole in place.


Painted and put together.

[raulduke]

Nice build and re-use of an old enclosure.

Looks almost like a piece of military equipment... in keeping with the Green Russian theme 

To get more disortion/saturation, stick some silicon diodes in instead of your LED's (eg. 1N4148's). This will will lower the clipping threshold and get you more distortion.

Or you could even switch between LED's/Silicon Diodes with a DPDT (with a centre off switch you could also have no clipping diodes, for another tonal variation).

[Willybomb]

It actually looks better in real life I think.

I put the 4148s back instead of the LEDs, and I think I like it more.  Still not a massive muff fan though (haha!).

[raulduke]

Cool.

For what it's worth I prefer triangle and violet muffs over the Russian variants.

Maybe build one of them and see how you like it...Don't give up on the muff just yet!

[warriorpoet]

Cool.

For what it's worth I prefer triangle and violet muffs over the Russian variants.

Maybe build one of them and see how you like it...Don't give up on the muff just yet!

There are so. many. muffs. It's such a tweaker's circuit!

Nice work with that cool old box. Be sure to try a couple more muff variants before you give up. I like the Violet and P19 best.

[Matt]

Agree with above switch the leds to si diodes. The threshold with leds is too high for that gain stage IMO. Kitrae is a great place to start with muff mods
That pedal looks very cool!

[Willybomb]

Yeah, it was a pretty open sound (I'd read Kitrae, that was part of my decision to try the LEDs), but not that great.  I might make a muff with a tone bypass switch.  I can see why people like to use the BMP as a tone control for their pedal designs.  Here's a better pic of the box.