toneblaster mk 2.5

[kodiakklub]

i decided to slay the dragon today:

jimi: please look this over to make sure i did this right. thanks again a million

[pinkjimiphoton]

Jimi man this thing sounds sick! Love it! First the harmonic perc and now this! I cant keep up I gotta build em both. Gotta find the time. Might have to give up sleeping for a while 


Always great playing man!

I'm really in need of some lead tones. I think like many of you I'm always looking for that sound, ya know what I'm talkn about the sound that makes you look like you smelled something. Haha

thanks jim
i got no chops anymore, but i pretend to be able to play a little.

you mean the famous "funkface!!!" somewhere between something stankin and an o-face...when the tumescence suddenly blooms south of the belt for a moment...

"whooo!! ah believe ah felt a liddle "wiggle" down there"...that's the sound we're always looking for. lol.
this is a neat circuit. when you guys build it, i think you'll find that "edge" i keep talking about. this thing sounds @#$%in' awesome with the guitar rolled back, if you play dynamically. pegged, it's almost a metal sound. but it's always got that fuzz thing to it. it's soooooo weird, like it wants to sputter out, but sustains anyways.

maybe between us all messing with it, we can make it to toneblaster mk 3, i'm sure there's stuff in here that could be improved on. to me, the two big points are it's dynamic ability and it's fuzzularness. wow, spell-checker didn't even highlight that one.

a couple possible mod ideas... for more of a compressor, go with a 5k attack pot. it won't do much to the distortion, but will let ya dial in more sustain. the distortion will pretty much be full on, but much softer. the trimmer in parallel with r9 should probably be more like a 500k in that case i bet.

a small trimmer, maybe 1k between the diode clipper and ground may let ya dial in how much of the compression is available, it kinda seems a little like one of jack orman's circuits i've seen.

again, i'm a hack.

definitely use sockets i'd imagine. q1 can most likely be any npn ge, the directly grounded emitter should make whatever ya use have max gain.
for the other transistors, i bet a mostfet like pn2222 or so whatever may sound great in q2 or 3. i soldered mine in, cuz this was like one of my first builds...
i actually remember!
first was my wah, with help from rg back when i first got online, 1999 or so.
built my first kit, a 2 transistor silicon fuzz kit, in 05.
next was the "double fuzz kit" that was like the "suzz" fuzz rg and jamie drew up at the dawn of the interweb.
then three pcb's from "diyeffector" on ebay, an sho clone, delta fuzz, and classic npn fuzz...
my burnt toastie overdrive that i cobbled together out of shit...
then i built rob's simple tremolo,
then my fuzzface, then my ugly face,
then this thing. wow. time flys.

now i'm about 60-70 builds, and got almost every one working, with only a couple total fails.
and it's all because of good folks on the internet teaching brainiacs and dolts like me how to make the sounds in our heads reality.

so...that said... a toast to all who make their own effects!!
cheers!
jimi

[pinkjimiphoton]

i decided to slay the dragon today:

jimi: please look this over to make sure i did this right. thanks again a million

let's see...you need to swap the locations of the 1n34a and 1n4001...the 4001 is for reverse polarity protection, with the 47u/100u  (i think i ended up with 100u there) cap it makes a simple half wave rectifier i think...

the 1n34a is a temperature stabilizer for q1. that particular diode HAS to be germanium for it to work, the idea is the leakage of the diode compensates for the leakage of the transistor at temp extremes. it was in the old "plate to plate"  website's "britface" fuzzface mod.

vr 2 needs to be in parallel with what you have labeled as r7, the 100k resistor so as you parrallel them you can decrease the resistance. you have it in parallel with the 330r resistor, labled r8 in your schematic. i did not connect the unused leg to the wiper of the trimmer. i don't think it will matter much.

i suck at this!!! lol...but yes, i think you've got it other than them couple things bro.
it looks good to me..the 1k resistor (vr 1) on your schem should be a trimmer, but 1k fixed resistor is probably fine. i have a feeling you could replace vr1 and r9 (5.6k) with a 10k trimmer, but i'm probably wrong.

but your translation of vero skills are pretty freakin' good!

[pinkjimiphoton]

karl, i took the liberty to mess up your schematic. it should be right now.

thanks for drawing it!!

[kodiakklub]

UPDATED:

ill start working on the PCB layout now!
edit: i kept VR3 as a 1k resistor. trying to save board space.

[pinkjimiphoton]

cool,
but  ...you may wanna use 914's in the clipper. you'll need like, i think 6 in34's for EACH 914 to be equivalent. you may get a big output drop with in34.

it definitely will sound different, more fuzz, and less dynamics. just a heads-up.

my suggestion, would probably be to make it switchable if you plan on using them.

also, gus smalley says one of them is probably doing nothing...so...he's a lot smarter than me! read his comments in the thread please!!

rock on!

look forward to seeing a pcb!

[kodiakklub]

fixed again. i was just copying your values from the vero layout pic.

[pinkjimiphoton]

i believe i can safely say now:

GO FOR IT!!!!!

[kodiakklub]

i would be unfortunate if i was red/green color blind. i suppose. 

[pinkjimiphoton]

lmao!! point noted!!

how's this, instead?

@#$%IN' GO FOR IT!!!!!

[kodiakklub]

OMG could you imagine trying to do a PCB layout if you were R/G colorblind? the pads would look the same as the ground pour. a nightmare. 

[pinkjimiphoton]

i guess i am colorblind, all pcb's look the same in my eyes!!

[kodiakklub]

for your building pleasure:


i cannot believe i did it this quick. new record i think. cant wait to build this out after xmas.

[kodiakklub]

so where do i get an NTE103 or its equivalent?

[pinkjimiphoton]

looks great!!! thanks karl!!

you should be able to get nte103's at any electrical supplier that stocks nte stuff. google up equivalents, it's just an npn germanium. because of the way the circuit's biased, i'd imagine ANY npn ge should work fine...the emitter to ground resistor usually sets the gain, but directly grounded is just like turning it up to "10".

i think if i recall, it was an ac176 replacement, or something like that.

[kodiakklub]

whats the ideal hfe for Q1? i know the nte103 is about 90....would the 120-150 range work?

[Quackzed]

wait, i think that r7/vr2 is still going btween the 330r and q3 rather between the 330r and the attack pot...
i'm drawing up a slightly altered version from kodiakklubs schem, ill post it in a few... just rearranged the placement of some things to clean it up a bit... nothing changed tho. hope thats cool...

[kodiakklub]

dammit. you're right. ill fix that now-ish. thanks!

[kodiakklub]

updated: thanks again quackzed

[Quackzed]

ok, i did a revised schematic, hope thats ok, here it is...