Univox Square Wave

[jmusser]

I was wanting to know if anyone has a sound sample for the Univox Square Wave to hear what it sounds like. I believe I have most of the stuff to build it with, except the 2N545B Transistor. Is this hard to come by? Brad Fajardo's E Mail keeps getting sent back to me, and he seems to be the Square Wave man. I'll be starting the Orange Sunshine today. I'm just looking for some vintage 60s fuzz tones.

[cd]

The 2n545 is nothing special, you can use any low gain Si NPN.

[Mark Hammer]

That should be a 2N5458.  It's a FET.  You can use a 2N5457, and probably even a J201.

I made myself one of these.  Nothing earth shattering.  The amount of distortion is fixed in the stock design (changing the value of the 3k9 resistor probably varies gain, right?).  The tone control essentially provides a variable-resistance path around the bypass capacitor, so you can get less bass or all the bass.  In principle, you could install such a passive tone control on anything that had enough boost at the output to survive the passive loss.  In that respect, it is no different than any passive tone control just before the output pot.  It can probably help to change the germanium diodes for silicon or simply more germanium ones in series to raise the clipping threshold and output level.  I think I did this to mine and there was no mindblowing change in tone, just a change in level mostly.

There are samples over at Runoffgroove, but I find mine a lot more distorted than those.  I imagine there are FET gain differences that come into play.

[Lonestarjohnny]

http://daniellanois.com/
If you listen to the sound track of Slingblade you'll hear Daniel play through a Marshall Plexi with the DeArmond Square wave generator, very bueatiful tone, This was my Rig in the 70's, Marshall Plexi, 2 4X12 cab's with pre Rolla's, a De Armond  Square Wave, and a Echo Plex, For me it don't get no better. I've had both pedal's, and i prefer the De Armond over the Univox.
Johnny

[Mark Hammer]

Dan is a "local boy" apparently (from the Outouais).  For a local campus radio show and column I did at McMaster University in the late 70's, I had the good fortune to get a tour of Grant Avenue studios that he and his brother ran in downtown Hamilton, Ontario, somewhere around the time that both Brian Eno and David Byrne were using it.  Didn't meet anyone there who was famous, and I'm not sure who it was that gave me the tour.  Nice facility, though, and nice people.  Dan has a great sensibility about distortion.

[Lonestarjohnny]

1 of my Fav's,
Johnny

[black mariah]

IIRC, there's a clip at tonefrenzy.com. The Orange Sunshine is pretty good. You'll probably like it.

[jmusser]

Thanks for the tips. I was wondering about that suffix being "B", because I'd never heard of it. That's why I figured it was hard to come by. I wish I could remember half the stuff about electronics I used to know as a teenager. In 74 and 75 I was in radio and tv repair in high school (Nerd). I wasn't into making boxes at all, and up until I got on this site, I never knew there was such a thing as stomp boxes. I'd just never been around rock guitar players, and I always thought their amps did it or something. the only reason I got into boxes at all, was because I found out they existed, so I bought a Big Muff for sustain. I took it apart, and said to myself, "I paid $70.00 for this"?! "I could make this for next to nothing if I knew what the components were"! There must be a site on the Internet for this....... Another question, has anyone ever made the Maestro Fuzz? I read where Keith said that it was the "Satisfaction" fuzz, and it don't get more 60s than that.

[brian wenz]

Hello Hello--
     Yeah, I built the FZ-1A circuit and love it!  This is the one with 3 germanium trannys.   Awhile back Gez gave some great advice on how to bias the trannys for this circuit...do a search for it!
Brian.

[jmusser]

Thanks for the tip. I'll check out the archives for it. Well, as it turns out, it wasn't the Orange Sunshine I had parts bagged up for, it was the Rex's Fuzz. What happened, was once upon a time, someone gave me a bunch of components in a box, and I started bagging up projects out of them. After I got to looking through the attic, I found a box that had The Fat Gnat, Rex's Fuzz, Birthday Fuzz, Green Ringer, Dallas Rangemaster, Differential Distortion and the "Thor" box all bagged up and ready to go. I was only missing stomp switches in a couple of them. So, I should stay pretty busy the next few weeks! I remember that the Fat Gnat was an absolutely awesome box. The rest I don't remember much about. I believe the Green Ringer is a ring modulator, and I believe the Thor and Rangemaster are boosters. I don't believe there were sound samples for either of the fuzz boxes, but I had parts for free, so why not.

[black mariah]

Tonefrenzy has clips of most of those, I think. The Green Ringer is more of an octave effect, but I hear a bit of ring mod in there. Strange little pedal, but useful.