Tonebender Mkii Clone with mods

[chromesphere]

Hey dudes,

I've acknowledged in the last few days that i think Im becoming slightly obsessed with germanium fuzzes. Heres my Tonebender MkII clone with mods.  I made the layout in diptrace and followed most of the suggested mods on fuzzcentral, with a few extras: changed bias resister of q2 to 47k and made bias resistor of q3 a pot for some crazy fuzz sounds.  Details in the build report below. If you like it you can order a PCB from Madbean, he's is called the pasty face, and use his roadrage to invert the power.

I'm thinking about doing a comparison video of the buzzaround / soul bender / tonebender mkII as they all have their own unique sound, the tonebender mkII so far being to most gritty.

Hope you like it, i know i do!  Anxiously awaiting the opportunity to crank this baby

Paul
Sound Demo

Build Report

[spaceboss]

Pretty, pretty.

[chromesphere]

This is going to turn into a similar thread as my king of tone clone thread isnt it?

"its not pink"

"...well....it looks pink"

"its NOT pink"

[JakeFuzz]

Excellent sounding pedal and great looking build too. Which transistors did you use in there? I am thinking this circuit would sound good with really dark NPN Ge transistors to balance out some of the grittiness and extreme treble response of the MKII's. This is soon becoming my favorite fuzz circuit of all time 

[chromesphere]

Hey Jakefuzz,  Im pretty sure it was you that did a comparison video between a mkii mkiii and...soul bender...or something like that from memory?  Sorry im pretty sure it was you...?  Anyway, since i heard the comparison, i've wanted to build a mkii

I cant remember the part number of the transistors, they are both GT russians, the small ones are low leakage 20-30ua approx and modern (early 90's).  The larger Q3 is also russian, 100ua approx leakage and date of manufacture is early 80's.  Im getting some new GE's in soon to test out.  Some GT308V's which, apparently on researching, gains are a little low   Still ok for q1 and q2 though hopefully. And also some ac128's, felt like trying some non-russian GE's to compare.

The mkii is pretty versatile!  You can make it gritty.  You can make it smooth.  Does some fuzz factory-esque craziness.  Yeah, its a good one!

Paul

[JakeFuzz]

Yep, I think it was a soundclip from a while back. Glad to see that helped in the decisioning.

I like those GT308's I have a bunch of really low gain GT's and think they sound good. They have tons of mid-range which is cool.

[pryde]

Excellent build. I dig the ubber-grittiness of yours. My recent Mkii is pretty griity as well. I ended up with a fixed bias around 6.7v for q3. The best sound I get is attack 90%, guitar vol ~75% and fingerpicking. TONS of great fuzzy texture 

[chromesphere]

Hoping the GT308's weren't a waste of money!  I wonder if they have a shunt resistor.  The tech spec gains are really high (80-150), but most people are saying the gains measure less than 70...soon find out i guess...

Yeah Pryde, i find that over 90% on the attack, starts to make some misbias / oscillation noise.  Aparently its inherent with this particular circuit.  Havent tried rolling back the volume / fingerpicking, have to give that a go!

On a side note, I was messing around last night with the buzzaround i built a few months back, and wacked in one of those older pale blue top hat GT's with higher leakage.  Sounds like a TOTALLY different pedal!  Alot more gritty / velcro'y.  But i actually ended up putting hte modern one back in, because the soul bender and mkii sort of have that terriorty covered, where as the modern in the buzzaround sounds more like a high gain pedal with a touch of fuzz. It's actually a really good combo!

Paul