I was doing a small speaker repair today, when I came up with a crazy, little idea for a fuzz/buzz box. It involves encasing a small, low-wattage speaker inside some sort of enclosure, tearing/cutting the cone somewhat to ensure a nice, raspy sound, and micing it up with a small microphone element inside the same enclosure. The speaker would be driven by a small DIY amp of course, powerful enough to cause the speaker to distort and preferably with an added tone control. On the mic side would be some sort of basic mic preamp, and whatever impedance matching circuitry was required, as well as a volume, and possibly even tone control. Basically (in case it isn't obvious yet), the idea is to utilise the small speaker as a distortion source and harness that sound (via the mic) for use through a proper amp. The flavour of distortion can be tuned and altered by over-amplifying the speaker by varying degrees and/or tearing the speaker cone to personal taste. The pic below shows a block diagram of the signal chain, but the whole thing is intended to sit inside one bigish stompbox. Any ideas/thoughts?  Does anyone know if something like this been done before? Is it just a completely ridiculous idea? I doubt I'm going to try this one in the near future; just an idea to throw out there...

I heard somewhere that Ray Davies (The Kinks) had to play a gig with a busted up speaker and thus 'invented' fuzz! Don't know if its true....?

That's a really cool idea.  You'll need to be very carefull with your microphone/speaker set to keep from having wicked feedback at a loud gig. 

"Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it"

It was Dave Davies of the Kinks who supposedly slashed the speakers of his Elpico amp and fed it into a larger amp thus "inventing" the preamp. Great sound, have fun emulating it.

I think Petemoore was talking about something similar in the Kazoo sound thread elsewhere on the forum.

i've had a very similar idea for months but haven't had time to box up.

i've been thinking about doing it with an old telephone mouth/ear piece for that tinny, distorted telephone sound.  same exact block diagram, although i was thinking about a few other tweaks as well...

Effector 13 made a pedal called Torn's Peaker that did a pretty good job at mimicing the torn speaker/fuzzy sound.  i'm not sure if they still make it though.

I heard Ike Turner did it back in the 50's.

Quote from: caress on April 29, 2008, 08:41:31 PM
i've had a very similar idea for months but haven't had time to box up.

i've been thinking about doing it with an old telephone mouth/ear piece for that tinny, distorted telephone sound.  same exact block diagram, although i was thinking about a few other tweaks as well...

http://www.diystompboxes.com/smfforum/index.php?topic=56863.0

Quote from: SonicVI on April 29, 2008, 08:52:32 PM
I heard Ike Turner did it back in the 50's.

I believe Link Wray did it also. It may have been one of those happy accidents.

Wasn't it Link Wray who dropped an amp and a tube got loose?

Supposedly he poked holes in the speaker cone with an implement ( possibly a pencil or screwdriver) of some sort.

Quote from: LMJS on April 29, 2008, 09:33:53 PM
Wasn't it Link Wray who dropped an amp and a tube got loose?

That was Paul Burlison of The Rock and Roll Trio. Their version of "Train Kept A-Rollin'" is said to be the first recording with "guitar fuzz".

Quote from: SonicVI on April 29, 2008, 08:52:32 PM
I heard Ike Turner did it back in the 50's.

Right around the time he was inventing the jet ski and the strobe light, right?

I would like to put all of the rumors to rest.  It was me who first implemented the torn speaker idea.  In '87, while playing with my band, GOOD E 2shews.  My friend bob figured out what I had done and told everyone.  Then Ike Turner was like, "I was doing that way back when." Supposedly, between bouts of spousal abuse, wearing big sunglasses, and doing a whole lot of cocaine. He was a liar, among other things.  (I actually taught him the b^&%slap. He never knew how to do it right before me. Yet another thing he took full credit for.) Before 88 there was absolutely no distortion on anything.  Many albums were posthumously re-recorded with the new great sound I had come up with and a great lie was perpetrated on mankind.  The music was so good that people soon forgot what it was like beforehand and naively started believing it had been like this for a long time.     


Before me, Kashmir absolutely sucked.   

Quote from: frequencycentral on April 29, 2008, 06:25:44 PM
I heard somewhere that Ray Davies (The Kinks) had to play a gig with a busted up speaker and thus 'invented' fuzz! Don't know if its true....?

ive read this somewhere
some guy used a screw driver to damage the speaker cone to create a fuzz sound

As stated, it was Dave Davies of the Kinks (not Ray) who slashed his speaker cone.  It's all in his autobiograph (a predictable read: sex, drugs blah blah).  He probably wasn't the first, though (see above for conspiracy theories  ).

Quote from: gez on April 30, 2008, 03:48:04 AM
As stated, it was Dave Davies of the Kinks (not Ray) who slashed his speaker cone.  It's all in his autobiograph (a predictable read: sex, drugs blah blah).  He probably wasn't the first, though (see above for conspiracy theories  ).

I stand corrected, though I am now fully prepared to believe that it was actually trendyironicname who invented fuzz in 1987. There must have been something rattling in my ears and creating what I then believed to be distortion at that great Motorhead gig in 1979......

Wrong, wrong, wrong, it was Eric Clapton's Marshall used in the Bluesbreakers that had a torn speaker!

I'm with Rick on this one.  1987 was a good year for fuzz!

Quote from: gez on April 30, 2008, 03:48:04 AM
As stated, it was Dave Davies of the Kinks (not Ray) who slashed his speaker cone.  It's all in his autobiograph (a predictable read: sex, drugs blah blah).  He probably wasn't the first, though (see above for conspiracy theories  ).

From http://www.wraysshack3tracks.com/openingpage.html
"Realizing that they were on to something, Vernon had the Raymen attempt to put the song down on tape.  They originally named it ODDBALL.  But, in the studio, Link just couldn't get that "dirty sound" he'd gotten onstage.  Link felt that it had something to do with the amps.  So, he took a pencil and punched holes in his amps' tweeters. The Fuzztone was born!"

That was 1955. The Kinks recorded "You really got me" in 1964 with the 'sliced speaker'. Almost 10 years later.

--john

Lord Sutch 1963!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zStiVCAHcuo