Hi fellas,
I've been doing some vero/stribpoard layouts lately and I finally built one of them. From my first circuit trace, of a Throbak sTone Bender, which ended up being nearly identical to the Color Sound / Sola Sound mk II stonebender, not counting the mods, which at this point are mostly well known. My clone actually sounds a lot better than the Throbak. Hell I could build and sell these things if I had the mind to! The low end is thicker and tighter...the throbak in comparison sounds kind of thin and mushy. I used to have to run a Fat Boost after it to thicken it up, and because of this, never played the thing very often. I think I will have to mainly attribute this to the quality of the electrolytics I used (BC Components) vs the Xicons in the Throbak. I also used a multilayer ceramic capacitor rather than a ceramic disc, did not experiment with this. Swapping the transistors between the pedals affected the gain level and noise floor, but the tone stayed pretty consistent between each pedal. I need to find three better 2N404s for my build, the ones I have in there (from minifux1 on ebay, Peter Langer) are on the noisy side... especially when the input trim ("pre gain") is rolled back. This was a very satisfying build, and I am very pleased with the result. Might just be a tonebender fan after all. I'm getting the hang of this pedal thing and it feels great! Clear coating the metallic silver spray paint finish really made it look a whole lot better. the spray clan clear coat is a lot easier and nicer looking for me than brush on polyurethane, another lesson I learned from this build.
I call it the Royal Albert Hallbender because the tone is SO reminiscent of Jimmy Page on the ZEP DVD. I guess any good MK II will do you there...but this is a really good one. Pre-Gain (I called it Input Trim) is great for taming really hot pickup guitars, or just getting a more overdrivey sound. I've heard it can help impedance issues with wah pedals and such, as well. I just like having the bias external in case a weird z vex kind of mood strikes me, or playing outside in the heat or something might require a nudge. You can alter the character a bit too with this control.
BEHOLD
(http://i102.photobucket.com/albums/m112/monkeyxx/RoyalAlbertHallBenderverostripboardlayoutthrobaksTonebendertonebendermkIIv10-1.gif)
(http://i102.photobucket.com/albums/m112/monkeyxx/stonebendervsrahbender002.jpg)
(http://i102.photobucket.com/albums/m112/monkeyxx/sTonebenderandCLONEGUTSRoyalAlbertHallbender024.jpg)
(http://i102.photobucket.com/albums/m112/monkeyxx/ROYALALBERHALLBENDERandlunarmoduleguts017.jpg)
(http://i102.photobucket.com/albums/m112/monkeyxx/ROYALALBERHALLBENDERandlunarmoduleguts005.jpg)
(http://i102.photobucket.com/albums/m112/monkeyxx/RAHBENDERandSTONEBENDERforsale006.jpg)
Quote from: monkeyxx on June 07, 2011, 11:13:05 PM
(http://i102.photobucket.com/albums/m112/monkeyxx/RAHBENDERandSTONEBENDERforsale006.jpg)
Your red wire from the battery snap goes to the input stereo jack? ??? shouldn't it be the black??
^POSITIVE GROUND!... :icon_wink:
ok then! ;D