Tycobrahe Octavia Build

Started by bwanasonic, December 21, 2003, 09:56:18 PM

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bwanasonic

Just finished a Tycobrahe Octavia and am quite pleased with it. Had a few stumbling blocks getting going, but after tracing a few boneheaded errors it works nicely. It does have a bit of high pitched oscillation at the very max setting of the intensity control. If I roll back the treble on the guitar I can tame it, but it is not much of an issue, as I much prefer this pedal with the intensity rolled completely back. This gives the most pronounced octave effect. With the neck pickup on my Strat, I get a nice range of Jimi-esque tones. Running either a Ge Fuzz Face or Mosfet boost after it to *kick it up a notch*. I used one 5087 and two 5089s. I may try a PNP Ge for Q1 at some point. Another poster had mentioned using a trimpot for R5 (collector of Q1 to ground), but I didn't find this to have much effect. I used the medium sized pad-per-hole (15X25 pads) from smallbear and was able to (just barely) stuff it into the 125B sized enclosure I prefer. Overall a pretty versatile pedal. At full intensity a pretty extreme fuzz and at the other end the classic octave sounds I was looking for. I will post my layout and some photos ( maybe a clip or two) in the next couple of weeks*. After the holiday craziness is over...

Kerry M

* http://home.earthlink.net/~bwanacentral/html/bwanasonic_main.html

rx5

I iwsh i coud build it too...but m havin a hard time findign a transformer... :(

BTW, u done with the FTM?? they sound great too.... :)


-Ralph
BE d Bezt, Urz D Rezt... RoCk ON!!!

bwanasonic

Quote from: rx5I iwsh i coud build it too...but m havin a hard time findign a transformer... :(

BTW, u done with the FTM?? they sound great too.... :)

I must say I do take the easy availabilty of parts for granted sometimes. I'm not sure what's involved in getting stuff shipped to you, but I have an extra mouser 42TM011 that I could send you. The FTM is on my *eventually* list. I was pretty heavily influenced by Adrian Belew, and he got some cool sounds out of one. I seem to remember him saying he prefered the sound of it straight in to the board and that he had a hard time getting one to sound good through an amp. If I'm not mistaken his tune "Big Electric Cat" from "Twang Bar King" features a Foxx Tone Machine. It's the kind of device I would use on my own recordings, but it wouldn't get much use at the biker bar gigs I tend to play :wink:

Kerry M

PM me with info on sending stuff from the states.