Summary reviews on what we've built so far

[Xavier]

I think this could be a useful thread. As there are lots of DIY effects sometimes it's a drag having to surf through the forum looking for data. i think it would be useful if we keep a thread up with a short resume about how the effects sound.

here's my 2 cent. feel free to cut & paste your comments in between

BOOSTERS

AMZ Mini Booster: NOT a clean booster, to me it is mostly an almost-distortion pedal. With humbuckers it's kind of muddy to my ears. Lots of character though. Not tight sounding, but very full

AMZ Mosfet Booster: Very clean and powerful booster, it even adds a hint of brilliance to the original timbre. Makes a very good buffer at unity gain. Sounds equally good with humbuckers and single coils.

LPB1/2: Full range booster. Slightly emphasizes low mids. Highs are slightly reduced. Sounds fatter and more organic than the Mosfet boost. Less boost available than the Mosfet boost.

Microamp: Bewteen the LPB1 and the Mosfet boost in sound characteristics, sounds very clean, probably the flatter sounding of them all

TILLMAN. Sounds very much like the Mosfet Boost. It is very clean and works very well in guitar cavities, as it also acts as a buffer. Only 3dB of gain available. This must work extremely well in dead sounding guitars, as it brings "life" to the tone.

DISTORTION

CHAOS: It reminded me a lot to the DS1. A cutting distortion with not much sustain .

BSIABII. Very good hard overdrive pedal (wouldn't call it distortion). Lots of gain, tight bass (not your Metallica-type of tone), good palm mutes. Think 80's metal. At low gain it also makes a good overdrive pedal

DR BOOGEY: The absolute high gain king. A tricky build, but totally worth. A Dual rectifier in abox. Dense, thick distortion, natural sounding, good for modern metal (this is the "metallica" pedal). The eq makes it extremely versatile and effective.

AMZ OVERDRIVE PRO: This was a let down. If you love the Big Muff you will probably like it. Wall-of-fuzz, for chording it sounds HUGE, but still it's a fuzz and not an overdrive.

OVERDRIVES:

OD1: very sweet sounding overdrive. More gain and grit than a TS, middy as hell, smooth top end, but lacks output. Not much boost here

ZAKK WYLDE OD: All the OD1 lacks is here. Has more boost and more gain. Good for boosting already overdriven amps, even as a stand alone OD works decently.

ODIE: This was another let down. Pretty generic overdrive, different from a TS but thin sounding. I didn't find anything special about it

PEPPERMILL: Oh-so-slight OD. Very, very slight. I see it more as a booster with some grit, but doesn't change the overall tonality of the guitar and it's pretty full sounding. Ideal for spicing up a clean tone .

FLIPSTER: This one is for bass, but does the Ampeg impersonation extremely well, authentic sounding. Adds dirt and grit, and sounds well at medium gain settings. Gives some extra punch and "throat" for rock bassists.

[mojotron]

Great topic for a thread - I will post some of my experiences as well. I tend to build one of everything I think I am interested in, then if it's not all I thought it could be I mod away until I got it or move on to a better design.

Here's a few I have built:
Fuzzes -
- Numerous iterations on the GGG Boutique Fuzz - +ground Ge, -ground Si, hybrid, integrated design with FC's AxisFace - I love them all - but to get it right you have think like an artist - not an engineer!

Tremolos
- EA Trem - Well, this is a good trem pedal if you want sort of a generic/modest tremolo effect and only 2 knobs to deal with. Fairly straight forward build, nice project.

- Tremulous Lune - If you really like tremolos - this is unbelievably great! Not a really tough build, but I did have to run down to Radio Shack to get some photo cells - just check them out by holding each up to the light - should read ~<5k - dark should read ~500+k - I used FuzzCentral's build - nice and simple - but with so many knobs some might find that challenging - do the up/down mod too - this pedal is simply awesome!
Steve (the bear himself) has some great pointers at: http://www.smallbearelec.com/Projects/TremBear/TremBear.html

Boosts
- Fat Boostered - Just about everything you would want out of a boost - really easy build too - JD's build at GGG is great.

- "AMZ Mosfet Booster: Very clean and powerful booster, it even adds a hint of brilliance to the original timbre. Makes a very good buffer at unity gain. Sounds equally good with humbuckers and single coils." - I would agree to the letter! Very nice description.

Distortion/overdrive

- GGG's TS - Everyone needs to build one of these. I liked it so much I modded it all the way to sound just like my F$lldrive, then I swapped in a BB opamp (don't remember the exact number); Well my F$lldrive was on ebay the next day! I hardly use this pedal since I started working on my own ideas, but it's great to have around when I want that sound.

- AMZ OVERDRIVE PRO - I did not really like this too much at first, I went out and bought a DP1 as they are topographically similar. Then I reverse engineered the DP1, modded, tweaked - used an LM358 with 120pF cap to bleed from out-to-(-) pins - and poof I had the exact same sound as the DP1 without the LM308 in the little can! And poof again, my DP1 was on ebay the next day!

- Vibin' Champ - This is one that I introduced - with a switch on the First FET's bypass cap - this goes from a boosty 'fenderizer' pedal to overdriven Deluxe Reverb sound - this is my main overdrive at the moment. I also have a 'Peppermill'-ed version as well that I like very much - if someone is interested I can post this.

- Thunder Chief - Great tone - this is my favorite 'Brown Sound'.

- BSIAB2 - Great pedal - very authentic VH1/VH2 sound - I love this pedal and the GGG kit is an easy-ish build.

- Dr Boogey - It's got a zillion knobs too, but if you simply need to be blown away by a high gain pedal's tone - you need to build this and join the discussions on controlling the squeal at max settings.

- Plexizer - This is one that I introduced too - kind of a refactor of the Thunder Chief w/tonestack+Miller caps+a few extras from the Marshall 1959 design. It's got a zillion knobs but it gets every marshall-ish tone that is milder then the TC - which is again milder than the Dr Boogey. I really like having all 3 on the same board. It does all of the right things in front of a Boss RDD-10 delay and EH DMM to give me an early EJ sound, as well as a good Cream sound. By far, this is my main pedal as right now I'm kind of have a plexi thing going on.

- TonePad's DS1 - What an outstanding pedal - I used the 4558 build option. With the right mods (and I put those in a post somewhere) this is a great Satriani sound - I love it! Just fire up the Ibanez (w/Dimarzios) and you can call me 'Joe'.

Phasers:

- TonePads PEZ 90 - I didn't have any of the right transistors or FETs - I was in a hurry and just used what I had on hand (mpf102s) and it works great - no matching involved - YMMV. I love this thing - way better then my old Ross knock-off and exactly like the MXR with really strong phasing.


Well, that's all I have time for right now - I'll write a bit more later.

[boogietube]

Had to reply to this one-

AMZ Mosfet boost- Great clean boost with a little "sparkle" when driving a distorted amp. Recommend a trimmer for biasing. Shame about the pot rotation- glad smallbear will have the right pots in 2007.

ROG Flipster- An awesome bass preamp- that Ampeg tone from my peavey bass amp. Overdrive characteristics can get farty if turned up. Has a throaty sound that cust through.

ROG Tonemender- It's a shame that there aren't more people building this one. It has the quitest and cleanest boost that I've ever heard. The tone stack is soooo versatile. I use it through my marshall to boost clean solos and using the tone controls, I get a fender clean amp sound. Amazing!

GGG Drop in wah and Fuzzcentral Clyde wah and Fuzzcentral buffer- I used a GGG board with a Fuzzcentral buffer and Fuzzcentral Values. Icar taper pot , Halo Inductor etc..  By far the best wah I have ever heard. Period. 

Tonepad Big Muff Pi- A classic with true bypass- No popping with 3PDT switch. Don't like the stock cap values (1UF) Makes it too bassy for my taste. I'll have to change them soon-but I'm still using it so it can't be that bad-!!

[petemoore]

  Tone cap on Neck Volume, both PU's have series/parallel sw.
1  Vox case Speed control W/SS Phase-Viber [vibe caps were too wobbly] and [Low Gain Recovered w/Stratoblaster, does boost.
2  Vox Wah: TB, PS Jack, Buffer, YFasel Ind., Qmod, Qswaps, Revoiced etc.
3  Rangemaster W Adj. Lp Filter, Volume, TB // Dist+ w/ adj.LP Filter [gain set] Volume, TB
4  BMP...I'll have to look and see what's in it...lol...I know there's 1 NPN Ge 
5  Rocket, this is capable of Dist/Fuzz/~boost, Si buffer, FF is NPN Ge
6  Brown Munster
7  FF...has a .047uf on the 1k, OC44 and Nice Ge in Q2
8  EZ Vibe, the second, this Vibe is so nice.
9  OS Comp
10  L6 TC Echo Park or SCReverb
11...usually one of the two 5e3 amp's driving celestion GB's or mostly an Alnico Blue.
-----reviews-----
1 SSPhaser:This pedal does alter the tone in a way I like, very useful phase sounds, the treadle action speed controller is sweet addition.
2  V847: Sounds great %^&*ed, might like a different pot, it has a 'hitch' in the range which actually sounds freaky fast, humpy when passed over at medium speed, and not too noticable if real slow across there..lol wah's real nice still
3  *RM: the LP Filter pot gets messed with regularly, Helps voice guitar and other stuff like Fuzzes and phasers etc., makes the Guitar Volume pot do tricks. Distortion+ is also in this box with it's own TB switch and LP filter pot...these get used alot.
4 BMP: Bad Mutha Of Thick FuzzTone, has Toothy attacks, Syrupy Sustain...Doesn't do much besides heavy chording and super thick single notes for me, except get a little more squashy or bitey depending on what's driving it..or if it's output is through compressor...
5  Rocket Fuzz: This box is a versatile 3 knobber, does Dist, Fuzz, lots of output...drives later boxes...I actually dial this one in for different functions
6  Brown Munster: I whipped it up, it sags or compresses, has silky tone/becomes Mini-Booster except it's less bassy voicing
7 FF: I'ts just a FF...about the gadzillionth!!! Sucha Happy Fuzz !
8 EZ Vibe: Has instant ziptie speed footcontroller on it...not too bad...I can get from here to there on it easily, I'm not sure mine likes seeing high input levels?
9 Orange Squeezer: Has one knob [nice!], compresses subtly, is low noise, has a nice transparent tone to it, adds a touch or more of edge when Fuzz is before it, Big Output, does well in varying conditions, I wouldn't mind having another one on the input...very nice there to 'stabilize' how much clipping-how long in a Dirtbox..sweetening a phaser by pushing it a bit harder/not hard enough to cause it to clip.
10 Tone Core Echo Park: Does Echo like crazy, has Dwell Function!, Swell is Super cool, Lots of Tricks...2 inputs/2 outputs...
11 Amp 'n Speakers...Tuned Tube Amps Driving Tuned 2x12'' cabinets...to very good effect !!!
  Clean ranges from amp, to amp w/rangemaster or OS or Munster
  BMP Alone is Fuzzy enough, w/Preboost [which can be DIST+, RM etc.] makes for a more cutting attack and firmer clipping overall.
  Rocket or Dist+ for 'drive and OD to Dist tones. Add Boost and increase all that.
  Munster Sags, compressed slightly, tons of output available as it's basically a MiniBooster w/adjustable LM317 supplying power.
  FF is for treble boost when on alone, does that nice guitar cleanup, this probably has the greatest range of clean to heavy fuzz [and a wide tonal change] by going from attenuated pickups to turned up guitar w/boost on.
 

[MartyMart]

Nice idea, as I'm always "searching out" build reports and wading through dozens of de-buggin posts !

I have WAAAY to much stuff built to list it all, so I'll just go with the "boxed up and in use" list

Boosters :
Fat Boostered - very flexible full eq and good tone
AMZ Mosfet Boost - a classic super loud clean booster
Phillip's Range Blaster - NPN Ge RM "tuned" for a little more lows, perfect when pushing a valve amp
The Crank - Boost with some grit, seems a super tone with my rig, record with it regularly.
ROG Peppermill - nice "Fender" tone and slight grit too - V nice !

Overdrives :
ROG Tube Reamer - second build, still sounds great, I modified it some, so it's more like a V II looks now
Highway '89 - Doug's superb overdrive with good TC also
My Classic 30 Amp sim - Get's damm close, I dont care if you're a "toob geek" and hate Jfets ... it's FAB !
Bassman '59 - same goes for this too, "Bassman" owner was pissed off when he A/B'd it !
Fulltone Fooldrive - The classic TS with some cool changes and boost option
Grandlaff dynamic overhype - same as above !
Liquid drive - about the best of the Dist+/250/Ross  type clones, get well used.
ROG Odie - recent second build as fist was badly done, good non opamp TS tones
SD-1 highly modified , to the point where it's almost something else ! I should retrace it and sell them

Distortion :
BSIAB II - second build after first "perf one" died ( my third ever build ! ) true classic amongst pedals, VH all over and more ! ( Thanks Ed G )
Meteor - recent build and eq to sort out, but superb high gainer , almost out of control !
DIY DS-1 - stripboarded one with a few "typical" tweaks - blows the real one away !
Tech 21 XXL - Big fat 'n whoolie !
Dr Boogie - never quite got it right .... need to make another with all 5 stages and eq
Plexizer - superb serious OTT sound
Big Muff/Dreamer - This is more Distortion than "thin 60's fuzz" so it's here and great
Univox Superfuzz - more metal pedal than fuzz again very OTT and makes a great noise !
Melanhead headcase - Very nice distortion, and tweakable too

Fuzz:
RM classic FF - Just worked rigt off and still sounds good
Bazz Fuzz - My first build Still a very nasty and useable effect
Tonebender pro MKII - was great but bias went wierd so not used anymore 
Dragonfly's Smooth silicon fuzz - Probably the best fuzz I have, sweet buzzy and biased up !!
RockFace - The FF with "heat biased" opto retro thingymagig - worked even with a hairdryer on it !!
( What's she gonna look like with a chimney on her ..... )
Lots of others with the word "......Face ...." on them.

Wobbly stuff :
Not a ton of sucess here, probably just my talents showing their limitations !

P45 with univibe mod  - Superb, made from Torchy's layout I like this subtle "vibe" sound
Easy vibe - well worth the build time, gorgeous lush vibe - instant Gilmour
P90 - never worked, probably just my crappy layout, went back about 4 times to it ... nada ! I have a 1977 version anyway.
EA Trem - Built one, was OK scrapped it for parts
Kay Trem - FAB ! choppy and nasty trem
Ring Frobnicator - I seem to be one of the few to ever get this working ! Superb trem and ring mod sounds
Tremulous Lune - 10/10 absolutely you MUST make one of these, best trem i've heard - period ! ( lots of knobs too )
ROG Phoser - can be nice if you get it right, for some reason mine has stopped "phosing" ! ( makes a "thunk" noise )

Compression stuff :
Flatline - Great circuit which works very well and has no pumping issues 10/10 !
Orange Squeezer - Classic not so subtle as others have said, in an original box , could use a version ith pots !
Dynacomp - It does what it say's on the tin , didn;t like it much so sold mine to a mate
Ross/Keeley comp - Just made one, it's having some teething problems and a touch of breakup, I was liking it though
CA Compressor - Mr Anderton's wonderful circuit, bit like a studio compressor +9/-9 pwr puts people off, but it's FAB ! 12/10
LA Light - Recent addition, I like it a lot , remember that it's from a "Limiting amplifier" circuit NOT compression

Tim Escobedo ( spelling)
Tim's stuff is just great and alway's fun , I mean "The bronx cheer" - a Fart pedal
Bronx cheer  !
Stupidity box - great distortion/ruby amp thing
Harmonic jerkulator - great and speaks for itself
Psychtar - "Other worldly" from ringmod clocks to indian octave madness
Ugly face - need to get to this one ICM7555 anyone ??
Rambler - decent little octave thing
CMOS Boost - had a touch of noise, but one of my few cmos builds that works !!
anything else by Tim is also worth building

I've missed out a LOT but I would get cramp of the hand if I carry on ..... !
Sorry to anyone who didn't get a mention ..
Marty.

[KerryF]

Great Topic!

Heres some of mine (I just started in the summer so shhh...) 

OVERDRIVE
1. Marshall BluesBreaker- Great slight to heavy overdrive.  Very Bluesy.  Huge boost.
2. Marshall BluesBreaker with Grit Control Mod- But this one seperate and its a lot less gain.  The Grit control is very hard to detect, but there.  Its great for an extra push when its with my other BluesBreaker.

FUZZ
1. Colorsound Tonebender MKII Pro- This thing is classic.  Great fuzz tones.  I made this for a friend so I am afraid that its gone, but the time we had was great!
2. Marshall SupaFuzz- This is very similar in design to the Tonebender.  But the tones are very different.  I get a very thick and heavy fuzz with a low octave in it.  It sounds very close to my Valve Junior when the power and preamp tubes are cranked!
3. 4uzz- A design by me.  4 similar but different fuzzes in 1.  You change between them with a rotary control.  This pedal has two silicon fuzzes (one is thinner and classic, and the other is thicker and a little rough), and two germanium fuzzes (one is very high gain, and the other is lighter gain and quiet).
4. Bobtavia- An octavia variant.  Not used to much because of the harshness, but still very cool sounding.  I added a switch to change from LDR to Stock mode.  With the LDR, you can control the intensity a bit, or you can use it as a foot controlled tremelo (I amazed this guy at Guitar Center when I showed him that  )

BOOSTS
1. Vintage Booster- A MOSFET type boost.  Cleans up you sound a bit and boosts it when on low boost, and then can get a very crunchy gain when boost is all the way up.  Boosts my Valve Junior into insane overdrive when the gain is up. 
2. Sparkle Boost- Not boxed yet, but will.  This is very well, sparkly.  Clean to a nice amount of clean overdrive.

COMPRESSOR
1. So Simple Compressor V2- Used Marks layout.  This thing is incredible!  I cant believe how good and clean it is.  One of my nicest builds.  Getting boxed with my Sparkle Boost.

WORKING ON TO FINISH
1. Thunderchief
2. Phase 45 Univibed
3. Self Designed Tube Reverb (The Pink Verb)

[mojotron]

Add:
-TonePad's Ross Comp. - I finally got around to building this a few weeks ago. If you want a great, yet simple, compressor try this one. I have a bunch of mods to talk about sometime, but this one is great as is.

[Processaurus]

I'll put the more unusual stuff I've tried, others will probably cover the other staple stuff-

Juergan Haible Wave Multiplier "A" and "B".  Really neat, unlike other distortions.  sounds like a weird filter sweep sometimes, other times, kind of phasey.  It needs bipolar power and a ton of soft clipping input gain to get the most out of it.  Could probably benefit from a tone control and a little extra gain on the end (or maybe just change the feedback resistor in the last opamp stage). 

Geo's Mos doubler:  couldn't get it to work, haven't heard of anyone else having luck either.

Geo JFET doubler:  could see it squaring and octave with the test signal, but it was really quiet.  As far as I got

Geo's  Low Fidelity Pedal (telephone/noise):   I couldn't get my noise source to work, and would like it to cut more bass and treble.  Used an LM324, after remembering it was supposed to be lo-fi.

Tim Escobedo's wobbler:  Didn't work until I put moved a coupling cap, so it goes JFET, cap, then it meets the other coupling cap and the 100K to ground.  The result wasn't very inspiring, but its the most basic phase vibrato you can make.

Tim Escobedo's preliminary 9v MS-20 resonant filter:  Worked, but didn't sound like my MS-20.  I agree, it clips in a yukky way.  To Tim's credit I love 4 other circuits of his I've tried.

Tim Escobedo's Q&D VCF:  Built it and must have liked the idiot wah better as a filter.

Tim Escobedo's Octup Blender:  Didn't work right, I think it needs coupling caps before the diodes, look at the green ringer diode mixing.

Tim Escobedo's Uglyface, idiot wah, PWM, triplefuzz:  Love 'em, and other people love 'em too.  They're crazy.  I settled on red LEDs for clipping in the triple fuzz.

Geo's walking ring counter LFO:  Works, either I or RGs schematic left an input floating on something (it was a while ago), Sounds great with a phaser.  I tried the random LFO (4 schmitt trigger lfos together) and didn't like it, not random sounding with only 4 output voltage levels.  Filtering it killed the amplitude, and still didn't sound random.  Same goes for Ken Stone's psycho LFO

Big Cheese/great cheddar:  love it, love it better with a big opamp boost on the input to really fuzz it out.  Stock tone control values sound nice to my ear. 

Paia Stack in a box: 30v tube distortion, wasn't crazy about it, despite TUBE mojo. 

Whisper Compressor:  Might not have had a suitable LED/LDR combo, and the schematic was from some crazy Russian site.  Wasn't impressed with what I got though, I remember it wasn't an obvious compressor like the Ross/dyna.

Attack delay: from an old article, couldn't get it to work, even with the special transistors.

String Muter:  I think this was a scanned article in Mark Hammer's stuff, it works, but triggered quite badly and didn't seem like it was good for anything. 



Wow, some of these came out pretty negative...

[mojotron]

...
Wow, some of these came out pretty negative...

But, that's great... You listed some I have forgoten about, but are really good projects - you also listed some of the ones on my bone-pile that did not work for me either; some of which I can't even identify any more . I think some of these might have just needed more design work. However, I should have listed more of my failures - or at least ones I was either completely disappointed in or thought unfinished due to my own inability to achieve what other's had - there have been quite a number of those. In my case, I think I might not have gotten as far as you did with them - perhaps some of those were harder to get right; I know all of the LED/LDR pedals were a challenge for me until I built a T-lune. I really wanted to get that one right, as it is one of the cooler ones I have ever used, but by trying harder I think I learned a thing or two. I should revisit the bone-pile this weekend before I scavenge all of the caps/sockets off of them.

[j sto]

Let's see...I haven't been doing this all that long, but I have been busy!  Most of the boards came from GGG and parts from smallbear and local.  Love this little hobby of mine to death.  My wife, not so fond of it.

Overdrive/Distortion:

1.  BSIAB2--Easy build and great pedal.  Mainstay on my board now.  One of the best OD's I have heard.
2.  SupaNova--Had high hopes and still do, but can't quit get it biased right.  Sounds a little farty.  Still working on this one.  I hope it will sound like a fat BSIAB at some point.
3.  BYOC Rat--Very nice, usable pedal.  The 'OD' clipping section is very nice.
4.  BYOC Screamer clone--Another classic.  Easy build and sounds great.  Gave it away when I finished my BSIAB2.

Booster:

1.  Jack of All Minibooster--Great clean boost that adds nice sparkle and very easy to build.  I used it on my clean and dirty signals.  Gave it to a pal as a present who bragged about it every time I stomped on it.  Have MANY requests to build them for other folks.  Not my deal though.  They can build them themselves!
2.  Sparkle Boost--Come on!  Classic.  Great sparkly booster.  Replaced my JOAM.  Easy build and very usable pedal.  Plus my first veroboard build!  Dragonfly = genius.

Phasers:

1.  Phase 90--Fairly easy build and sounds great.  I didn't add any mods, just stock and it is a wonderful sound.  I run it behind my distortions.
2.  Phasuer Fluer--Sadly, my only failure this year.  Gave up on it and tossed it.  Just buzzed like a fridge, regardless of what I tried.  Probably a little outside my experience range at this point.  Had tremendous hopes....maybe a little later.
3.  MXR100--Working on this one now.  So far, very easy build.  Will run before my distortions, in concert w/ my phase 90 for full aural assault of phases.

Other:

1.  EA Trem--Easy build and good, solid trem.  Not choppy, but very nice throb.  Gave it away in place of my small bear trem.
2.  Green Ringer--Octave/ring mod alien pedal.  Easy as heck to build and fun.  I use it way more than I expected to upon first hearing it.
3.  Small bear Trem--Does all i would ever need and more.  Plus my first perfboard build!

Probably going to build a Bluesbreaker next as the clips I have heard sound great.  I am interested in what ROG has to offer as well.  Looks like some great circuits.  The next frontier forme, I suspect.  Peace. jeff

[John Lyons]

Lets see...


Craig anderton "Super Tone Control" Name says it all. Sort of a parametric / state variable filter, full control over your tone from wild to mild. Bass, mid, treble, frequency and resonance controls. Nice wah in there as well if you use a foot controlled frequency pot. Use +/- 9v so you should use the MAX1044 bipolar supply chip.

Lovetone Brown Source. After a lot of "wrong" info and trials this has boiled down to something pretty nice. A somewhat transparant and full overdrive that likes to drive an already slightly distorted amp. Nothing high gain or over the top, but a good distorted boost with a variable tone selector. A bit of an odd circuit in some respects but it does sound nice over all.
Search for Doug Hammonds Tone Source in the gallery and threads.

Craig Anderton Ring Modulator  Nice small  build with all the crazy mathematical atonal ringing sounds on tap.  Produces a square wave only so this is also a sort of fuzz. Fun stuff. The carrier bleedthrough is always there with this one. Use a multiturn trimmer for sure. Uses +/- bipolar supply so use the MAX1044 chip here as well.

Maestro RM-1 Ring Modulator  Pretty large somewhat complicated build but well documented instructions at http://topopiccione.atspace.com/index.html  Nice clean "true" ring mod sounds. Variable fequency range switch and nice gong and metallic modualtion. Requires a transformer for the 15v bipolar supply but it's not that hard to do.


Rebote 2 delay (tonepad)  Worked well, right off. A little noisey at the higher settings but it didn't bother me too much, as I don't play squeaky clean anyway. There are a couple mods to either get oscillation or make the repeat knob play "safe" I like the out of control regeneration sometimes, just a matter of adjusting the knobs anyway... Sounds nice smooth, like  analog units.

Skyripper (joe Gagan) Hot and heavy Fuzz Face type sound driven by a rangemaster. Silicon/germanium hybrid. Cleans up well and has a variable blended input cap. Great classic rock and harder sounds as well as mild tones. LOTS of misbiased, ripping, gated, self oscillating and theremin sounds if you want them . Lots of knobs and switches makes this one a bit hard to build but if you want everything for classic to outerspace fuzz sounds this one will do it. Check this out: http://www.tungngruv.com/content2/sounds.html


Easyvibe John Hollis A good simpler version of the Univibe. One of those effects that make you want to turn on the lava lamp and dim the lights. Lush phase/churus and vibrato. The phase is the main one here. Listen to Hendrix Band of Gypsies and go nuts. The LDR / LED combo can be a bit tricky but there is a lot of info here and on John Hollis's site http://www.hollis.co.uk/john/circuits.html

Dr boogey  Needs some buggs worked out to be %100  but it gets the modern metal crunch in spades! ALl the info is posted here is you search for it. Things to watch for: Neat, short non crossed wiring. Shielded in and outputs to and from the switch. Added "miller caps"
I'm still trying a couple things here and there but this one is nice an unique.

BSIAB2 Sounds great, tight and harmonically rich, tight tone. Smooth and wide range tone control. You can add or modify to a different tone control to make this more scooped in the midrange for more of a metal sound. Play with the values in Duncan's Tone Stack Calculator.

Bobtavia  Full sounding octave up with a good fuzz tone as well. Sound best to my ear when driven by a fuzz or into a dirty amp. Turn down your guitar tone control and hit those higher than the 12th fret notes! Adds the slight ring mod harmonics and edginess. Great on chords to get that soner rock sound. Older FLaming Lips-ish.

Octave up sick box Gus Smalley Add a switch to sisconnect one 33K to ground and you have a fatt fuzz and an octave up. This one has more fuzz than the Bobtavia. A biot more octave going on here as well. The sound is...wel...sick but not in such a bad way.  Nice for those frealout solos etc. With the switch is gets a fun chunky fuzz sound. Stoner rock approved.

Colorsound Inductorless Wah. A super easy and small circuit with good resuslts. A quacky wah with the ability to self oscillate and really shape the tone for lead work. Make the 33K to ground variable with a 100k pot. As with all twin T filters has a little dirt to it. I find that for a very clean sound that is wasn't too good. But for anything mild to heavy gain wise it works great!

Tremulus Lune. Very nice smooth tremolo that gets pretty choppy as well. The strength of this one is the optocoupler which give that smooth transition. Lots of variability and waveform shaping. A modern classic. The LDR can be tricky but there is  a lot of info available here, on Tonepad and on the commonsound site.


Tonepad Pulsar Mine worked right away, no clicks etc. I really like the hard chop feature with this one. Get an agressive chop as well as standard type tremolo sounds. Read the build reports at Tonepad to see some mods. Small circuit, will fit most anywhere.

Little Gem Amp Run Off Groove. 1/2 watt classic rock type distortion with a single gain/volume  at bedroom levels. Sounds best into a 12" speaker but a tiny speaker can be built into a stompbox size unit to take around town. Best run off a Wall adaptor for battery life but a 9v battery is surely more portable.

Ruby amp. Same as above but with a gain and volume control. Clean up to classic rock distortion sounds.

Fender Blender  Heavy and some ring mod overtones. The sound is garbled as all octave type fuzzes but that's a strength here.This  gets a full fuzz sound and can blend between clean and fuzz tones. The low end stays clear and full  even when maxed out. Lots of nice overtones and artifacts at all  settings with chords and high notes. Stoner Rock approved!


A lot of these are on my soundclips page www.mrdwab.com/john/sounclipspage.html If you want to add any sound clips you have please get in touch as I think it's nice to actually hear an effect rather than talk about it.

John

[Xavier]

Add:

Colorsound Overdriver: Nice and fat OD/fuzz with eq possibilities.Warm, smooth and round. Sounds great with passive pickups, specially low output pickups. With active pickups it just doesn't work and sounds like a misbiased fuzz. A pity.......

Highway 89 OD: Another letdown for me. Too dark to start with, and farty bass, which is something that makes whatever the pedal is unusable by me. It' s a medium gain pedal, fender-like overdrive.

Mosfetzer boost. Hardwired fetzer valve into a mosfet booster. HUGE boost, ultra-clean sounding, yet warm. Did I say the available boost is HUGE?

9V filter. I'm adding this stupid small circuit to all my pedals so they get a clean 9,1V supply whatever the AC adaptor I'm using. Believe it or not, all my OD pedals sound noticeably better with this filter. Specially with the Dr Boogey.

[alfafalfa]

Xavier,

Stange that you Highway didn't come out right.
My Highway 89 is one of my best pedals, I even  made it darker because there was too much treble for my liking so you see it must have something to do with the way we build our stuff.
There will always be some tolerance between different versions of the same pedal.
And what I notice is that sometimes a pedal sounds good to my ears and  then the next time it doesn't.
There are moments I think e.g. the Peppermill is great and sounds very tubelike but then sometimes I think it's not really the grit of  an overloaded tubestage at all .
It tends to depend on my mood too.
Do any of you  feel the same about this too ?

Alf

[mojotron]

...
My Highway 89 is one of my best pedals, I even  made it darker because there was too much treble for my liking so you see it must have something to do with the way we build our stuff.
There will always be some tolerance between different versions of the same pedal.
...
Do any of you  feel the same about this too ?
...

Sometimes it's a difference in the gear too - in fact, my experience is that differences in sound is for the most part due to the gear you are using. Using a darker guitar on some pedals will give you what Xavier described (sometimes changing the input, or stage1-to-stage2 coupling cap to like 1/2 it's normal value can help) - i.e using a Les Paul and a Strat on the same box will give you a different performance from the effect. Also, the amp, and follow-on effects, will affect the behaviour of some effects. This is more the case with DIY stuff, but on the other hand - if you make your own gear you can get it to sound exactly how you want it to.

[John Lyons]

Jeez...I almost forgot my favorite DIstortion box.

The Fat Gnat  Jack Orman. Dual op amp FET clippers to ground wide wide range Low Pass Filter tone control, and a slighly broken up boost all the way to a heavy smooth distortion. Sounds great with a strat and singler coils as well as with humbuckers. There is tone shaping at the front end as well as the end of the circuit. It's goot nice bass resosponce and a smooth top. A good amount of high end that can be tapered off with the tone control if you want. Very lively, touch responsive and full of harmonics. I've never heard anyone else who built one though...funny.

Sounds in the link in my signature.

John

[Xavier]

Well let me clarify: the Highway 89 in my rig doesn't seem to be the best option. I guess with a strat and a bright amp it will be fantastic, but I use a Washburn N4 loaded with EMG pickups into a Mosfet Marshall . Not the most "vintage" stuff in the world. So I'm talking about pedals that work for me , and some of them don't. Same case with the overdriver. Great with a strat, horrible with my guitar.

Anyway I'm uninstalling the EMG's very soon.

[Antero]

-Bazz Fuss: Great on bass, too gated for guitar.  Build stopped working, though.   

-Feedback Loop: Cool, useful sounds, BUT a tone sucker.  Needs buffers, badly.

-Highway 89: Holy crap!  Best thing ever!  It makes me sound so GOOD.     Plus, roll down the volume and I get those hyper spikey Gang of Four sounds.  Yay!

[MartyMart]

Xavier,

It tends to depend on my mood too.
Do any of you  feel the same about this too ?

Alf

I wouldn't say that it's a "mood" thing, more the gear we use and ears getting used to something new.
New "working" builds are allways exciting and probably at first we all "love it - it's great - IT WORKS" !
but it takes perhaps a few days use, or a gig or rehearsal etc to get something properly bedded in.
There have been a few "classics" that I have "gone off" after a while, or others that even after some
"tweaks" ( can't resist doing that ) = still are NOT sounding quite right.
I'm not affraid to admit that I either just dont like something or ... got it wrong !! - whomever came up
with it .....
My scrapped stuff can have most things re-used, perhaps not resistors with very chopped leads, but as I
got about 3000 of them a couple of years ago for £9  .... I dont worry  ! !

MM.

[alfafalfa]

I wouldn't say that it's a "mood" thing, more the gear we use and ears getting used to something new.
New "working" builds are allways exciting and probably at first we all "love it - it's great - IT WORKS" !

I think you have a good point there, Marty
I feel the same about using a new pedal, the first thrill can easily wear off.
But I also experience the same with my tubeamps ( I usually use a combination of a 50 watt 2x el34 amp and a 50 watt 6L6amp and sometimes a 2x el84 PP amp) , sometimes they sound great and sometimes they don't.
It's all a matter of  standing in the right posistion in front of your speakers and even the correct mains voltage. Over here in the Netherlands it  varies between 223 volt and even 235 volts sometimes.
It might be wise to standardize the testing procedure for pedals and amps.
Standing in the same position , using the same volume on amps.

Alf

[blindsjc]

Oh man, all the people here have a lot of
builds, mine are sooooooooo few. hahaha

TubeReamer (RunOffGroove): Great overdrive, I just love to play Bad Religion
with it. Good gain, volume, tone and very simple to build.

TubeScreamer (TonePad): A bit more complicated then TubeReamer and less distorted,
but with a beautiful tone. I think some people that play classic rock will realy like this effect.

Distortion+ (TonePad): Sharp effect, good distortion but to me it has little sustain and
and I finished not using it too much.

BlackFire T: This is my favorite, I love to play with it in combination with ToneMender,
just select the marshall equalization (HI) and set bass and treble to the max, and mid to the
minimum. Now its time to some slipknot music...

Vulcan: Great overdrive, the better aggressive overdrive for punk rock. What I can say,
after BlackFire, this is the pedal.

ToneMender: I used my tonemender in a different way, its a preamp connected before
a TDA2050 amp that I use to play. Results? People are crasy when I ask if they want me
playing a marshall or fender amp cause I can emulate they with perfection...

Thanks for all
Sorry about bad english

Ronaldo