Mountain Leslie West - sounding fuzz

Started by Renegadrian, September 18, 2016, 06:35:12 PM

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Gus

I think wavley post is very good.
I simmed the circuit in the post and it does not change much going from 14.6VDC to 9VDC supply. The bias resistors could be adjusted.
you can find the preamp PDF with a search schematic and parts list
Q2 and Q6 are still made
the gain control is shown after the transistors
Maybe the circuit will give you some interesting distortion without the input transformer.
I did not find the RKC8 specifications, one site had a guess of 300 ohm to 20k ohm

For fun one could build a small amp that drives a speaker in an isolation box with a microphone into the preamp circuit

Derringer

Quote from: Cozybuilder on September 23, 2016, 07:50:01 PM
I have one of these Junior G-Mans- its a nice player. At that price point, you can afford to put in a different pickup.

no doubt
How's the stock p'up sound?

Cozybuilder

Stock pickup was OK, but I replaced it with a Benson Humbucker with 4-wires, and wired for single coil & humbucker options with a push-pull pot. I like this guitar, versatile, less than 6 pounds, intonation is spot on, feels good. By the way, Rob at Fool Audio is a member of this forum, and he'll treat you right.

Some people drink from the fountain of knowledge, others just gargle.

Derringer

i need another guitar like a hole in the head ... been selling off my unused from the herd actually

but that JR does have me rethinking ....

RRJackson

#24
Quote from: Derringer on September 23, 2016, 05:46:17 PM
Gaaaaaahhhh

if only it came with a P-90

http://fool-audio.com/Fool_Audio_Research/Junior_G-Man.html

There are some pretty nice humbucker-sized P-90 pickups out there. I like the Guitar Fetish AlNiCo Mean 90 a lot and they're only $34.95. I do installs for free. I not only own Fool Audio Research, I'm also a customer! ;-)

Oh, I'm basically out of Juniors. I came back to edit my post. I just realized, I have two with Bigsby-style vibratos, but I think all the Tune-O-Matic versions are either out the door or set aside for customers who haven't paid me yet.

I'll always do another run of those. They're the guitar I started the company to build (couldn't find a Junior with a hard-mounted humbucker and a Tune-O-Matic anywhere). Probably not until sometime next year, though. I really love 'em. A photo of my own attached.

-Rob


thermionix

#25
^ Well, sure, they're nice and light with only 2 strings on them! (lol)

Seriously, I had never heard of Fool Audio until I saw those guitars on this thread.  Seems like a heck of a deal.  I love Jrs and Specials, but I also love me some P-90s.  At those prices, no big deal to do some swapping.  I pretty much always change the electronics in a new guitar anyway.  The finish looks like it isn't too thick, which is good, especially for poly.

Am I correct to assume these are made overseas?  How would you describe the neck shape?

(Oh, hey, my mom lives in Bradenton too!)

chuckd666

Yeah what the hell, nice guitars! I want one of those Troikas, but I already have a white SG Special and I cannot justify having another guitar around :(

RRJackson

Quote from: thermionix on September 25, 2016, 01:30:49 AM
^ Well, sure, they're nice and light with only 2 strings on them! (lol)

Seriously, I had never heard of Fool Audio until I saw those guitars on this thread.  Seems like a heck of a deal.  I love Jrs and Specials, but I also love me some P-90s.  At those prices, no big deal to do some swapping.  I pretty much always change the electronics in a new guitar anyway.  The finish looks like it isn't too thick, which is good, especially for poly.

Am I correct to assume these are made overseas?  How would you describe the neck shape?

(Oh, hey, my mom lives in Bradenton too!)

Heh...I was installing a pickup in that one and thought, "It sure seems light." So I threw it on the scale. Most of them are around 6 pounds with a Tune-O-Matic or around 7 with a Bigsby. That one is a little lighter. It was from the 2015 run and it's been about the only guitar I've played since it came in.

BTW, that pickup I was putting in it is an Artec Double Black. I bought 20 of those (minimum order) a couple of years ago. I ran out a few months ago, but they were a really nice hot P.A.F. clone from their, "Classic" line. Period-correct plain enamel wire (can't make it in the States anymore 'cause the machine farts toxic smoke) and butyrate bobbins (smells bad...heh...). They wind the bridge pickup to 11.6K. Just about my favorite rock pickup with a Junior.

Yeah, I have these built by a vendor in the Shandong province of China. Owned by a couple of brothers. I originally contacted some Chinese vendors just to get mahogany blanks. I was sitting in my dentist's office a few years ago and I read this story about the Chinese clear-cutting forests to build a series of hydroelectric dams. They were talking about how a lot of it was old-growth hardwood like maple and mahogany and I'm all, "Hey, I needs to get me summa that!" That was when Gibson was in trouble for bringing in improperly documented hardwood and it was obvious that it was starting to get harder to source wood. The Chinese don't know from, "endangered" and I thought it would be a legal way to get some high-quality hardwood.

Except they also have incentive programs that subsidize shipping and make buying products that have been fabricated by Chinese labor a bargain. 'Cause they also don't have a problem with protecting their markets. So getting necks and bodies turned out to be about the same price as getting blanks. So in 2013 I ordered 40 necks and bodies from a Chinese vendor, after getting a sample that seemed really nice. Then before I was planning to reorder in 2014, another vendor contacted me and offered completed instruments for just a few dollars more than I'd paid for necks and bodies. They sent a sample and it was very nice, so I've been doing that since then. Which actually works out a lot better because the necks and bodies had to be sealed for the ocean journey and sanding the sealer off enough to finish them was nuts. A LOT of wood had to come off and sometimes I had to re-shape the roundover by the time I'd sanded through the sealer.

The neck is kind of a standard D. It's not a baseball bat like the 50's guitars, but it's not super-shallow like the ones from the 60's, either. Here's a photo of a particularly pretty one. ;-)


RRJackson

Quote from: chuckd666 on September 25, 2016, 02:51:39 AM
Yeah what the hell, nice guitars! I want one of those Troikas, but I already have a white SG Special and I cannot justify having another guitar around :(

The first shipment of Troikas should be in sometime in November. The prototype has been a blast. I was shooting for a kind of Tony Iommi/Pete Townshend thing, but with a middle pickup so's I could have the three-single-coils thing without it being a Fullerton-y guitar. The mini-toggles were because of my old Yamaha SSC-500, which I've always loved. It all worked out really great, IMO. I've been having a lot of fun with the prototype since it showed up.


thermionix

Very cool.  That neck looks like it would feel great.  I like the 50's baseball bats, but can dig on something a little less, and long as it's not 60's slim.  I'll be keeping an eye on your site.

RRJackson

BTW, those mini-toggles on the Troika are standard on/off for each pickup because I couldn't affordably use three-way On-On-On 4PDT Mini Switches, but the idea is baked into the design of the guitar for people who want to spring for 'em. The ones AllParts sell are $33 each. They're the EP-4363-010, if anyone's interested. Using three of those the guitar can be switched like Brian May's guitar. I always thought his pickups sounded a lot like P-90s, anyway. So with three switches you can get On/Off/Out-Of-Phase instead of needing a six switch setup. Which I think would be really cool.



Quote from: chuckd666 on September 25, 2016, 02:51:39 AM
Yeah what the hell, nice guitars! I want one of those Troikas, but I already have a white SG Special and I cannot justify having another guitar around :(

chuckd666

Crikey, $33 a switch. Definitely a lot of control from those three though. And damn.. that neck wood is gorgeous. Nice.

RRJackson

Quote from: chuckd666 on September 25, 2016, 08:10:11 PM
Crikey, $33 a switch. Definitely a lot of control from those three though. And damn.. that neck wood is gorgeous. Nice.

I've gotta be honest about the neck, though. That's the prettiest neck that's been through here. I actually wish I hadn't sold it. Heh...so that's atypical. Most of them aren't figured like that. I probably shouldn't use that as an example, because it's like deceptive advertising.

Sometimes there some light figuring on the wood. Like this one had an attractive backside if you could ignore the little knot in the middle. But if you'll notice the neck on this one, that's more typical of how they look. Usually very plain.

Just to be as honest as possible about what it is I sell. I could get figured wood by spending more, but then I'd have to charge more and I never really saw the value in figured wood. I mean, it's pretty, but that's not always a positive.

I remember when I was a kid my cousin was auditioning for a band Frank O'Keefe (from the Outlaws) was trying to put together. I used to tag along and try to be useful as much as possible just to be around the bands and stuff. So my cousin had this sunburst Les Paul Standard and they're all going, "That's a real purty guitar you got there. I hope you can play as purty as that guitar!" I mean, it was good-natured(ish), but he was young (around 20, I guess...I was like 14) and it made him uncomfortable. He got a call back and took his, "The Paul" from Gibson's old Firebrand line. Much less ostentatious. Always stuck with me.


chuckd666

Totally agree. Intense flamed tops are corny to me. Especially re: PRS.

roseblood11

I watched a video some years ago, where a guy stated that this circuit comes close to the Leslie West sound:
http://www.redcircuits.com/Page91.htm

I made a veroboard , which was meant to be held in place by a board-mounted pot and the LED.
I don't remember exactly, but maybe I used an external pot instead of the trim pot.

It didn't sound bad, more like an overdrive than a fuzz, but it could need some more tweaking.




wavley

Quote from: Gus on September 24, 2016, 08:50:48 AM
I think wavley post is very good.
I simmed the circuit in the post and it does not change much going from 14.6VDC to 9VDC supply. The bias resistors could be adjusted.
you can find the preamp PDF with a search schematic and parts list
Q2 and Q6 are still made
the gain control is shown after the transistors
Maybe the circuit will give you some interesting distortion without the input transformer.
I did not find the RKC8 specifications, one site had a guess of 300 ohm to 20k ohm

For fun one could build a small amp that drives a speaker in an isolation box with a microphone into the preamp circuit

One of the mods folks do to these is to move the gain control to in between the transformer and transistors to clean it up, I didn't do that because it will never be a perfectly clean preamp and I have preamps designed for being clean, I wanted the color it adds, I did a few things to make them less noisey, but that's it.  I think that pushing them hard adds a bit of pleasant distortion to drums that you don't instantly recognize as distortion that makes a nice and fat rock and roll sound.

A while back I ran across a video of a guy playing guitar straight through the shure M63 EQ and an M67 preamp and it sounded fantastic, but I can't seem to find it again.

If you wanted to get overly complex trying to nail this tone, you could do a jfet Sunn amp (the cathodyne PI might have a contribution to this, as discussed in an old thread) into a cab simulator, into the gain stage of the M67.  This would  give you all of the non-guitar, non-Leslie West's hands aspects of the signal path and might sound really cool.  I would imagine this would be a pretty versatile and good sounding thing for more than just copping Mountain tones, I bet you could nail a lot of late 60's early 70's hard rock tones.
New and exciting innovations in current technology!

Bone is in the fingers.

EccoHollow Art & Sound

eccohollow.bandcamp.com

DougH

^The M67 pres are cheap enough. Looks like a fun thing to play with for recording, if nothing else. Hmmm...
"I can explain it to you, but I can't understand it for you."

wavley

Quote from: DougH on September 26, 2016, 11:39:21 AM
^The M67 pres are cheap enough. Looks like a fun thing to play with for recording, if nothing else. Hmmm...

The good thing is that there are sooo many of them out there that even the Gearslutz guys buying them and modifying them and HiFi guys buying them to harvest the transformers to use as step-up transformers for moving coil cartridges has only doubled the price from $30 to $60  ;D
New and exciting innovations in current technology!

Bone is in the fingers.

EccoHollow Art & Sound

eccohollow.bandcamp.com

DougH

Quote from: wavley on September 26, 2016, 12:04:19 PM
Quote from: DougH on September 26, 2016, 11:39:21 AM
^The M67 pres are cheap enough. Looks like a fun thing to play with for recording, if nothing else. Hmmm...

The good thing is that there are sooo many of them out there that even the Gearslutz guys buying them and modifying them and HiFi guys buying them to harvest the transformers to use as step-up transformers for moving coil cartridges has only doubled the price from $30 to $60  ;D

Well, I bought one last night from Ebay. $60 including shipping. This should be interesting. I'm going to record some electric guitar with it and see what it does. I'm hoping this makes a nice different color crayon to color with. There's a youtube with a guy testing one out with his voice. You can definitely hear the bandwidth restriction and distortion when he turns it up.
"I can explain it to you, but I can't understand it for you."

wavley

Quote from: DougH on September 27, 2016, 08:03:18 AM
Quote from: wavley on September 26, 2016, 12:04:19 PM
Quote from: DougH on September 26, 2016, 11:39:21 AM
^The M67 pres are cheap enough. Looks like a fun thing to play with for recording, if nothing else. Hmmm...

The good thing is that there are sooo many of them out there that even the Gearslutz guys buying them and modifying them and HiFi guys buying them to harvest the transformers to use as step-up transformers for moving coil cartridges has only doubled the price from $30 to $60  ;D

Well, I bought one last night from Ebay. $60 including shipping. This should be interesting. I'm going to record some electric guitar with it and see what it does. I'm hoping this makes a nice different color crayon to color with. There's a youtube with a guy testing one out with his voice. You can definitely hear the bandwidth restriction and distortion when he turns it up.

If you're looking for a fun limiter to use on things the M267 from the next generation of those mixers, a really nice and musical squash on drums.  The amp circuit is op amp based so it's distortion is a little different, but not fundamentally so on a loud source because the input transformers saturate, and so will the output if you push it hard.  I keep attenuators on the outputs on all of mine so I can push them hard without clipping the interface, the same kind of thing but a different flavor than my green Altec stuff or what folks do with API preamps.
New and exciting innovations in current technology!

Bone is in the fingers.

EccoHollow Art & Sound

eccohollow.bandcamp.com