So apparently you can remove all the emitter resistors on a Big Muff

[midwayfair]

And make it an octave fuzz.

Check it.

http://www.diystompboxes.com/smfforum/index.php?topic=103338.msg920367

whilst i'm floating around the cosmos endlessly avoiding junk like the space station and the shuttle, and the odd UFO....  i often get the chance to breadboard stuff...

so from the silent cold darkness of space came forth the ''  SPACE MUFF  ''  

aka..the big muff ....but with a few cool mods.  

ive always liked the old steve hillage type synthy fuzz ...but never found it, ive tried many, but nothing was doing it for me...anyway..(and mainly has he did use early synths )

i messed around with the fuzz faeces, but again, it was a bit of a let down too...anyway.

on the supplied clips you'll hear a 'ducking' effect (clip 3) on the initial picked note, then swells up nicely...this gives a nice 'bloom' to it.

plus you'll hear the octaves ( yes octaves) i squeezed out of the bugger too...very cool...

basically being the lazy sod that i am, i removed all emitter resistors..(apart from the last stage) .and swapped the 10k collector resistors on Q3-Q4 gain stages, with various values ....as written on the clips.

of course these can be 'switched' to have your normal bog standard muff too.... which i definately intend to do, i love that swell effect of a transistor under pressure.. :icon_wink:

and the octave effect is a great bonus too....

another bonus is the slightly  'faux trumpet' sound  which was with the gain quite low...

plus it will do that 'overblown extreme breaking up' distortion too...

as options, these are very simple just like me..

clips:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/7464107/Q3-10K-820K-OCTAVEFX.mp3

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/7464107/Q3-470K-Q4-330K-OCTAVE-SWELLS.mp3

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/7464107/Q4-10k-330k.mp3

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/7464107/trumpety.mp3    

when i finish my endless tinkering i'll knock up a schematic/pcb/layout ok.......beep..........................................beep...............................................f.....g space junk.....

beep........................beep...........anyway enjoy the fuzzy clips. ...i'm off to discover water on europa now.....beep.............beep......................back later.

[bigmufffuzzwizz]

Omit compared to jumper?

[midwayfair]

Omit compared to jumper?

Haven't tried it yet, but you're right that he almost certainly must mean jumpers.

[atreidesheir]

That would make a nice component of a diy synth with autowah, octave, and whatever else goes into a guitar synth.  I usually hate those types of clips, but I really dug all of those.

[lincolnic]

Is that really all you have to do to get a Big Muff to sound so synthy?

Excuse me, I need to go order some Mudbunny PCBs.

[deadastronaut]

not so fast guys...

check the clips text.

it notes the resistor changes on the Q3/Q4 collectors too...

and yes Q1/2/3 emitter resistors are left out, and straight to ground.

cheers Rob.


love the space ritual pic..nice.


diode destroyer?...

[ch1naski]

Just as I start my first muff-style build (Pharaoh), along comes that damned dead astronaut. 

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[Cortexturizer]

Hm, I don't like this sound at all

[gordo]

This might end my "lack of muff" streak (no...don't even go there).  I normally am not drawn to these kinds of sounds but with the echo I think it sounds fantastic.  It cops the sounds that Frank Marino got on the the live Mahogany Rush album just before he does the falling bomb screeches and rips into World Anthem.  I always wondered how he did it and it just nails the tone.

I've got to drag one of the old muff circuits out of the junk heap and give this a shot.

[bigmufffuzzwizz]

not so fast guys...

check the clips text.

it notes the resistor changes on the Q3/Q4 collectors too...

and yes Q1/2/3 emitter resistors are left out, and straight to ground.

cheers Rob.


love the space ritual pic..nice.


diode destroyer?...

Hey nice to see you stop by! Yup best album is the live one with lemmy of course!
I've been doing creamy dreamer mods for awhile now, replace 390 ohms with a jumper straight to gnd and increase the limiting resistors a tad bit..Lots of gobbing gain.
So collector resistors. Clip 1 only has q3 labeled and clip 3 has q4 labeled..is there a pot your turning?
Makes sense with the gobbing gain and octave you get such an extreme sound.

[deadastronaut]

Hm, I don't like this sound at all

that's  a good sign that your ears are working properly LOL,   i know a LOT of people will hate it ,   however as you can obviously hear i wasn't going for the usual standard fuzz type sound ... that's been done to death over and over...and over again......i just want and require something a little different than the usual...if a billion people want to sound exactly the same as each other that's cool by me....but that's just not me i'm afraid. i like to experiment with sound...rather than merely duplicate the duplicated....  enjoy whatever floats your boat. its all cool...

[deadastronaut]

@magic:

i didn't use pots/trimmers..

i used my resistor sub box to try different values, just saves pulling bits on/off the breadboard.



i like to try the unorthadox, ,sims and scopes are fine, but if we all follow the rules it ends up the same...its a great circuit to really mess with...with some good, some bad results, either way its fun experiments


@gordo:  yep, electric reflections of war , frank marino, i was brought up on that guys stuff...red hot.

[G.G.]

I really like that 3rd clip. Looking forward to a seeing a layout if you end up sharing it someday!

[aballen]

that sounds awesome... spacey, synthy, zipper fuzz, love it.

[ch1naski]

Hey dead astro, it's not easy coming up with original sounds with discrete analog these days. So hats off and cheers.
 I'm going to try and set something up so I can have standard muff, and stompswitch it so I get the emitters to ground. It'll be like having two effects in one.

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