ancient prophet boost/od/dist/fuzz

[pinkjimiphoton]

cobbled this together.

sounds @#$%ing great. i used this last nite live and it totally kicked ass at stage volumes, from clean to scream to pitched static it did it all right from my guitar. i didn't miss my pedalboard at all. surprised the @#$% out of me.

this is a great way to use up leaky shitty low gain garbage germaniums. hfe of 10-60 tested, above that it starts to sound like shit.... tho high gain can give ya some octave fuzz stuff too if ya want.

anyways... this started as a reworking of my liberal komrade fuzz, i had added a boost to it but it didn't work right, so i set out to redesign something that would fit on the vero i'd @#$%ed up. i discovered that removing the biasing resistors gave a cool fuzz... and one thing led to another.

anyways... there's a pcb-ish layout HERE: http://www.diystompboxes.com/smfforum/index.php?topic=105694.msg953634#msg953634

if anyone wants it. i gotta do a vero still, and video, tho there is video of the bias schmias fuzz that just preceeded it.




if ya build this, and diggit, let me know.

the attack control does NOT have to be pegged... anything above about 10:00 on it will get fuzzier and fuzzier, kinda like a distortion + but with sustain like a big muff... right up to the point where it becomes for all intents pitched noise. if everything is pegged, and ya slam power chords, it kinda sags at ya then swells in.

super long liquidy sustain that almost seems to have a touch of envelope follower. mmm mmm. fuzzy goodness.

enjoy. peace.

[Harry]

edit: message removed

[pinkjimiphoton]

well *I* thought your reply was funny, harry... lol

[Harry]

sorry i realized you went in a different direction with this name probably for a reason and it probably is a good idea to keep political jokes off this forum lol. but hey free bump! 

so is pitched static like controlled feedback?

[pinkjimiphoton]

naaah, i don't give a rats ass if someone likes a name or not, they can call it whatever cuz they're never gonna voice it like i did anyways in the first place.
even if they use the stock parts i post in it, it all comes down to tuning the fuzz in the end. it takes a while to get beyond the 4.5v/half voltage thing, and
really try to listen to the interaction of the guitar and the fuzz.

i called it ancient prophet cuz i was getting some really old school fuzztones to it with a hint of almost prophet like envelopes on the distortion sustain. it was really cool, everything full blast just slammin' the front of the amp.

tuned static means it sounds so fuzzy, it's almost unintelligible, but it's pitched still. i mean... like... too much distortion.... if possible... in a very cool way. transistors hitting cutoff and swelllllllllllling back in kinda thing. almost like a fuzz slapback.

hard to describe. the one best for that is the one before this, check the bias schmias thread, the photon torpedo one will do that in spades when it's cranked full and the trims are hot.

[mac]

Most of us have forgotten leaky low gain germs waiting to fuzz.
There are no limits to what you can do with them... except hiss  

Well done Jimi.

mac

[pinkjimiphoton]

thanks mac!!!

i hope to get you some video tonite.... i'm gonna go jam down the street, i'll bring a guitar, this fuzz and an amp so hopefully i can let you guys hear it in a real life situation.

i know what ya mean about hiss. some of 'em it's all you get. 

[pinkjimiphoton]

stupid pedal trick. clean and dirty amp. cheap ass les paulish thingamabob.

whole lotta fuzzy goodness. depending on what you want, and how you use it, you can get a lot of fuzz sounds out of it.

sadly this video program compresses the audio more than the other one, but hey, at least it's in synch,even if it is backwards.

so turn off your mind, relax, and float downstream. if you like it, build one. if not, let it be lost to the fuzzular sands of time.

[Harry]

Ok so everyone knows gearman dude is jack black. But here's a little less obvious one, Jimi Photon=Capt. Spaulding? Just me? ok...

I gotta admit i got a little scared at 4:55. Like oh s*** gain is going to zero the pedal/my ears/somethings gonna go up in flames! Like you said almost too much distortion but something still holds the sound together just barely and just a little late. Interesting, too much gain for my playing but you make it sound good. thumbs up

[pinkjimiphoton]

why so serious??

[stonerbox]

Hah! Freaking awesome pic, Jimi! 

[pinkjimiphoton]

you can hear this thing live in this video from last nite. guitar solo starts about 3:04


the ONLY effect i have on, was lazy. ancient prophet, two cords, guitar and amp. just turn the guitar up and down.

[bluebunny]

. . . even if it is backwards.

It's a tribute to Rob, right?      Nice vids.

[tubegeek]

Kah-Razy!

Ancient Prophet: like Isaiah or something?

I'm impressed by your ability to play both righty and lefty.....

[pinkjimiphoton]

veroboard for it. have not built this one specifically, but i have built the circuit itself (first stage on daughterboard)

[pinkjimiphoton]

i can't play righty OR lefty, lol!!!

the video software by default inverts the video. <shakes head>

ancient prophet like... cuz it sounds old, and some of the buzzier stuff it does remiinds me of my old prophet 5 synth from days of yore.
used to get similar kinds of square wave with envelope kinda sounds out of it. almost filter swept kinda things.

it's true.

i am busted.

not only AM i captain spaulding (call me wendy, dahrrrrrrling)

but i fake playing left handed as a tribute to rob, who plays his ASS off for someone who does it backwards. 

[Harry]

hahahaah very good. now why isn't THAT your profile pic?

[pinkjimiphoton]

it is on some other places.

[pinkjimiphoton]

btw... you may notice if ya watch the live video that during my solo stuff seems to suddenly go crazy and get uncontrollable..
well yah... the sax player had walked into the big freekin channel switch and swapped me from my usual princeton to a hyper-overdriven boogie one.

took a minute to figure out... i was like... wtf... did the fuzz break?

once i changed the channel back, all was good.

i've tried this into clean fender, dirty fender, marshall and now a metal kinda patch, and it worked well... woulda worked better if it were tuned to that particular patch tho.

[pinkjimiphoton]

ooooospss... mistake... i messed up the polarity of the 1n400x and 100u electro...


my apologies, just realized i'm looking at this backwards from what i was thinking. not used to pnp at all
so used to drawing pos on top, neg on the bottom.... :oops:

so the cathode always needs to face the voltage potential, irregardless of polarity of the circuit. i thought the diode had to be reversed for pnp. the cap was just brain death.

if ya build this,  do the breadboard first. you may wanna change some stuff to better suit you.

remember too this isn't a crank the gain to 10 and leave it there pedal for most peeps.   

if ya test it with everything full, expect it to sound bloody horrible in a kinda cool way.

i'd start with the attack all the way down.. it will still overdrive like that cuzza the small resistor between pin 3 and ground.

start with the tone about 1/2 way up. i'd changed it, so it really only seems to do anything thru the first half of the sweep (you can make it a contour control, add a 1n cap to ground from pin 1 of the pot if ya want a little more tweakability, but it puts max treble near the center of the pot rotation, which i liked but found counter intuitive.

with your amp cranked up to a normal playing level... maybe not stadium volume, but at a volume you'd actually use it at ... turn it on and turn the volume up.
you should hear the effect come up immediately. crank it up to unity gain. or go past unity gain if ya want. the higher you go, the more distortion you'll get, it's fairly interactive with the attack pot.

now start bringing up the attack until ya get a decent fuzztone. you should be able to twiddle from fuzz to cleanish from your guitar smoothly... at least thats my way to do it.

that'll probably be, if you were looking at a clock around  10:00 on the attack,  1:00 on the tone and maybe 12-1:00 on the volume. should give you a decent useable range with a bit of a boost to it.

into a cleanish amp it sounds to me when the fuzz is cranked almost a univox kinda sounding fuzztone, and you can get that tuned static thing going fairly well. it's more jagged and harsh with the guitar up, but sweetens up when ya turn the guitar down.

into a cranked up edge-of-breakup kinda amp, it's smoother and darker and it makes the cream come out of it.

in the live video, you can also hear what it sounds like into a hyper distorted amp (if ya notice something clam me up, and reaching for the guitar knobs that's why... the sax player had brushed my amp's patch selector knob, and changed me from my normal princeton to a boogie-ish patch.).


objectionable hiss may or may not be an issue depending on individual transistors. i found i could dial in "sweet spots" that would be less hissy and still produce decent tones over a range of transistors... as long as the gain is really low they all seemed to work. you may need to examine your pinouts. i've found that often with these transistors, i just try them socketed in normal or reverse beta, and use whichever polarity sounds best. sometimes they have more-- or less--- gain that way. sometimes one normal and one reversed also seemed to help with the noise some, wondering if it was via phase cancellation.

you can also put a smallish cap from signal to ground on the output pot to help tame hiss. this is no worse than any marshalls i ever owned (ie: when you stop playing, you WILL hear some ocean, but it's masked when you're playing.  even the crummy noise gate on my cybers can deal with it)

things to play with.

i never ever used to do it until just like LAST WEEK even tho i've had it for years, but i would advise using a breadboard and trying this before committing to a build.

that way you can play with cap values etc.

something to ponder... most people seem to so far like a bigger cap for the input. you WILL get a LOT more fuzz that way.

but as you add stages, it will get unstable and motorboat possibly, leaving you with weird voltages and an aching bwain. and farty, gated, nasty, buzzsaw kinda fuzz.

however, if you go SMALL... 1-10n max on the input, and imho the smaller the better (but not below .001u) the sweeter the entire beast becomes. you get more guitar signal thru the crucial
first stages with less waste in bass frequencies you don't even have.. and then as it comes out of stage 2, the big-ass 470n cap lets enough of the subs generated by the first two stages of distortion and it starts to phatten up again. after the final stage, it phattens up more... and you lose most of the farty buzzy stuff. (good, imho) and it starts sounding almost muffish with a sweet sustain and weird almost envelope follower effect.
you can effectively tune the overall gain of the circuit by how much bass you wanna let thru.

while you ARE dispensing with it going in, as you fuzz the signal, you add harmonics and sub harmonics..so you're replacing some of the original frequencies with for all intents electronically synthesized ones, which i think may be part of why it sounds the way it does.

lean in, and it cracks. back off, it smooths down. whack it and it overloads (at some settings) and swells in.

there's more going on than i am even on the dawn of comprehension of.