Ever since I heard Brian Eno's "Here Come the Warm Jets" for the first time, I've been on a quest for that guitar tone. I'd occasionally forget about it, but after a few years I stumbled upon the info that he had used the WEM Project V for that song (and all the fuzz parts on his early records). I knew I had to have one. I tried building the vero layout from FSB, but it failed to properly fire up and I haven't gotten around to fixing it yet.
Enter twin1965 and his V Fuzz boards. I'd been hoping someone would make a PCB for this circuit, and since my vero build was in sitting in dry dock, I jumped on the chance when he offered the boards for sale.
Luckily for me, this build fired up without any issues at all. I used some NOS BC108Bs from Small Bear, because that's what was in the original (and also because they look cool). I put it into a hot pink enclosure, because an effect this intense needs an equally intense box.
Two gaffes: my footswitch hole accidentally got drilled just slightly off-center, and I melted the corner of a trimmer while soldering in the attack pot. Whoops.
I will say that this pedal features my best wiring to date. It's not impressive by the standards of this forum, but I took my time to keep it clean and organized, and I got results. It's not often that you get to see noticeable progress in your own skills, but this feels like a good step forward for me. The input sleeve wiring was inspired by Juan and Cleggy.
Here it is, in all its pink glory:
After years of searching, I've finally got a sound I've been chasing. It's very, very satisfying. I was so excited that I went and recorded a quick clip of the riff that inspired the whole tone quest. It's sloppily played, and recorded DI into Pro Tools, but I A/B'd it against the record and it's actually pretty damn close. (I also triple-tracked it to get closer to the album, which sounds like it has at least two or three guitars playing the riff.)
Dropbox link because I couldn't get SoundCloud working, sorry:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/33143162/HCTWJ.mp3Massive thanks to twin1965 for making these PCBs and helping me put this thing to bed. Sometimes, if you're lucky, you really can get what you want.
